Geoff Hoon: I have been doing a little research into what the Liberal Democrats advocate, and it is interesting that despite the hon. Gentleman's clear personal commitment to transport, he is unable to persuade any of his colleagues to support him. The Liberal Democrats would cut £1 billion from the transport budget, in the highly unlikely event of them being elected to take responsibility for anything. We need to put anything that the hon. Gentleman says about transport in context: he has not even been able to persuade his own colleagues that transport is a good thing.

Paul Clark: I am happy to look into the circumstances of that station. The requirement is to look at the programme that we are putting in. Many of the stations were built at times when accessibility was not a key factor, although obviously new requirements for stations and rolling stock all demand modern standards of accessibility. However, I am willing to look at the individual case. We are having to plan; in respect of the £370 million "Access for All" programme, we need to work on the stations used by most people, weighted by the incidence of people with disabilities using them. The small scheme programme, with its £25 million of Government money, has levered in third-party contributions, bringing in about £95 million worth of improvements. However, I will look at the individual case.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman's constituents are obviously having difficulty in securing refunds. The regulator would be the first place to go to try to get this mater addressed. It is always difficult for constituents when there are cancellations. Criteria are set down on when refunds ought to be paid, depending on the nature of the cancellation of flights. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, I will be very happy to point him in the right direction.

Sandra Gidley: I thank the Minister for that reply. At many stations operated by South West Trains, staff have been replaced with ticket machines. Those stations are often the smaller ones, and disabled constituents can no longer access a train at the station of their choice. Despite his well meant access for all programme, is it not the case that access for disabled passengers is being restricted by penny-pinching initiatives by the train operating companies?

Paul Clark: The hon. Lady will be well aware that South West Trains made a substantial number of proposals, many of which were in fact rejected by my noble Friend the Minister of State, Lord Adonis. Indeed, many of those proposals were made on the basis that there would not be unfettered continuation of ticket supplies to the travelling public where there was clearly demand for it. Decisions were taken about some ticket offices, but many proposals were rejected. I would draw attention to the work that we, and indeed the hon. Lady, have done on access for all, secure stations and the assisted passenger reservation service.

Joan Ryan: My hon. Friend will be aware that First Capital Connect's far-reaching proposal to reduce ticket office opening hours affects 28 constituencies and a large number of stations, including Enfield Chase and Gordon Hill in my constituency. It will affect security, and it represents a reduction in customer services and not good value for money. I hope that the Minister will reject the proposal when he considers it, taking those grounds into account.

Maria Eagle: Action by the Government, and particularly by the Labour party, has increased the number of women in Parliament. However, the under-representation of women in public appointments has only improved slowly. Indeed, there has been a recent drop in numbers, which shows that there is more work to be done by all of us who believe that increasing diversity improves decision making across public services. I hope that the hon. Lady and her party will join us in doing that work.

Lynne Featherstone: Part-time and flexible working allow many women to carry out dual roles, but most of that work is available only in the service or retail sectors, so employers need to be educated as to the benefits at all levels. Does the Minister agree that that should also apply to the senior grades in the civil service and how many jobs at the highest level are offered part-time?

Mark Pritchard: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	Sadly, the Wrekin Construction group, which is in my constituency, announced today that it was going into administration. The company has been around for nearly 50 years, and 1,100 people will be affected: 600 jobs will be affected directly, and 500 indirectly. Indeed, jobs will be affected in the great city of Glasgow as well as in Shropshire and the west midlands.
	I alerted the Business Secretary to the fact that the company was experiencing short-term financial difficulty, and needed strong support and help from the Royal Bank of Scotland, back in December 2008. The Business Secretary has done absolutely nothing to help the company. Those massive job losses were avoidable. As I have said, the company has been around for nearly 50 years. It currently has an order book worth £50 million. It is profitable. It is an absolute scandal that although Ministers knew that this was avoidable, the Government have done nothing to save jobs. If the Business Secretary comes to Shropshire, rather than having green custard on his face, he will definitely have egg on his face.

Sharon Hodgson: Further to the point of order made by the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), Mr. Speaker. I am a member of the newly formed North East Committee, and I received an email from the Clerk yesterday afternoon telling me, prior to that meeting, that it had been cancelled, so that is probably why nobody attended the meeting. I have all due respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I am not sure where he got his information from. If a meeting is cancelled, is there any way of recording that in  Hansard?

Bankers' Pensions (Limits)

Ann Clwyd: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the pensions of board members of banks that are wholly or partly in public ownership to be limited in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.
	My Bill is born of public anger; there is hardly a household in the land in which anger has not been expressed, and outrage has not been felt, over the greed, selfishness and professional incompetence of a handful of Britain's most prominent bankers. They, through a combination of overconfidence and professional arrogance, have completely undermined the reputation of, and public confidence in, the British banking industry.
	Listening to these people's mealy-mouthed apologies to the Treasury Committee some weeks ago, I just felt how totally detached they are from the world outside and from the daily experiences in the lives of people in my constituency. There is a total disconnect, and they seem to preside over a world wherein they are accountable to nobody. Their remuneration, pensions, and perks appear to be determined by a small tightly-knit group of the privileged, who divvy out the cash like robbers stacking up the notes for the great share-out following a bank heist. Their ruthless decision taking has gone unchallenged for far too long. Since the big bang, successive Governments have progressively trusted them to operate within conditions of carefully manicured deregulation. They have exploited the opportunities that have been offered in a cavalier manner, and are now drawing us back into a period of greater regulation. They have only themselves to blame.
	There has been almost a conspiracy of silence from the beneficiaries of those people's largesse. In particular, institutional investors have rigidly remained silent, for fear of upsetting the dividend streams that have inflated the funds under their management; they themselves have feasted on a culture of fat bonuses and inflated commissions. At some stage it was all bound to come to an end, and now that we have reached that point, we must build on sturdier foundations.
	My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has rightly said that the conduct of those bankers has been "unjustifiable and unacceptable". If only the international community had responded more positively to his calls, made nearly 10 years ago, for greater international co-operation and supervision, things might have been different. The international banking community knew that no nation state could act in isolation, and step out of line by imposing tighter regulation, without undermining the credibility of its own national institutions. We have become the prisoners of international inaction, while greedy bankers at home have known the truth and have been able to gorge on it—they have dishonoured their profession.
	Britain had once been the envy of the world for the success of its banking institutions. We had led the world in innovation with our banking products, investment management services, transfers and competition generally. Now the spivs have moved in to destroy a carefully constructed reputation. My Bill should make them sit up and think twice before they come running to the state for a bail-out at massive cost to the taxpayer; if they want our help they will have to pay for it, and we know that they will not like that.
	My Bill would amend section 91 of the Pensions Act 1995, subsection (2) of which deals with the inalienability of occupational pensions and states:
	"Where by virtue of this section a person's entitlement, or accrued right, to a pension under an occupational pension scheme cannot, apart from subsection (5), be assigned, no order can be made by any court the effect of which would be that he would be restrained from receiving that pension."
	Subsection (5) allows the amendment of an entitlement in certain conditions, such as when there has been a
	"criminal, negligent or fraudulent act or omission".
	Those conditions do not appear to arise in the Fred Goodwin case, although the issue of negligence is still to be decided on, following the inquiry being undertaken by United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd. It would, however, be possible to amend subsection (5) to include the acquisition by the state of a majority of the share capital in the company when the company was deemed incapable of trading as solvent, and was faced with administration arising out of the actions of individual directors. That is the substance of my Bill.
	We know from events over the past week or so that the Government are being advised that forfeiture or even amendment of the Fred Goodwin pension entitlement is problematic. We now learn in the press that an attempt might be made to sue two senior executives for negligence in the exercise of their discretion over the payment. Again, we are in unknown territory.
	The pension situation for employees of RBS is very different from the one being enjoyed by Mr. Goodwin. Since 2003, new employees of RBS have not been able to retire early on a pension until the age of 55. Mr. Goodwin, aged 50, closed the final salary pension scheme—the one from which he is benefiting—to new entrants. Next year no employee, irrespective of their start date, will be able to draw their occupational pension before the age of 55. Employees over the age of 50 who resign, and who might be eligible for a pension at the age of 50, can claim the pension, but it is reduced by up to 40 per cent. for early payment. For RBS employees and pensioners who were employed by the company before 2001, the company also applies a pension clawback when they reach state retirement age. Irrespective of whether they qualify for a state pension, RBS claws back up to 30 per cent. of the value of a basic state pension from their company pension. That is having a disproportionate and detrimental effect on older pensioners, especially women part-timers.
	My Bill does not deal with the Goodwin case, as it is not retrospective. However, it at least deals with conditions that might arise in the future if further banks need bailing out. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House of Commons said in a recent BBC interview, the Goodwin settlement is not a pension,
	"It is a severance payment."
	I say that it is a severance payment dressed up as a pension, and we want our money back. That is a message that the greedy and grasping Mr. Goodwin should take on board. We recognise that his pension pot, part of which was presumably transferred in, is small in comparison with the total of toxic liabilities that remain the responsibility of RBS.
	Other banks, too, might wish to keep that message in mind. I am thinking of Lloyds Banking Group, which has just this week received further protection for further billions, made necessary by its takeover of HBOS. Lloyds has always been a first class bank. Indeed, in October it ran an advert that read, "We've been rated Britain's safest and most trusted bank. You could say we're a bank you can bank on." Within months of that advert, Lloyds, acting in the public interest to avoid HBOS's collapse, had taken over the bank only to find that HBOS had failed to reveal the toxic nature of its liabilities, bringing Lloyds, a good bank, to its knees. When Eric Daniels and Victor Blank considered the bonus and £6 million pension pot of Peter Cummings, the former head of corporate lending at HBOS, did they really think that he deserved it?
	My Bill would not sort out excessive pensions paid in banks that have been able to avoid taxpayer support and guarantees; neither is it retrospective. It is a Bill for the future. In the meantime, the country asks that those who mismanaged banks, destroyed savings, undermined share prices, depressed pension funds, threatened the existence of charities and the security of millions in retirement, and put tens of thousands on the dole should give some of their ill-gotten pension money back.
	I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Ann Clwyd, Rosemary McKenna, John Battle, Mr. Michael Clapham, Mr. Peter Kilfoyle, Mike Gapes, Mrs. Anne McGuire, David Taylor, Andrew Mackinlay and Mr. Dennis Skinner present the Bill.
	Ann Clwyd accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July and to be printed (Bill 73).

Theresa May: I beg to move,
	That this House notes that unemployment rose by 146,000 to 1.97 million in the three months to December 2008, the highest level since August 1997, that the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance in January 2009 rose by 73,800 to 1.23 million, and that the number of vacancies in the UK fell by 76,000 in the three months to January 2009 to 504,000, the lowest figure since records began; further notes that unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds was 616,000 in the three months to November, the highest total since 1995; further notes that the Government has failed to establish a national loan guarantee scheme to increase the flow of credit to businesses, and calls on the Government to establish such a scheme; further notes that the Government failed to introduce necessary welfare reform during the years of economic growth; further calls on the Government to relax the rules on jobseeker's allowance to allow unemployed people rapidly to take up training opportunities; believes that the Government should immediately cut taxes for firms taking on new employees who have been unemployed for three months; notes with concern the failure of the procurement process for Flexible New Deal, and further calls on the Government not to backtrack on the use of the private and voluntary sectors in welfare-to-work provisions; and calls on the Department for Work and Pensions to expand the use of an 'invest to save' approach to welfare-to-work services, allowing the full potential of the expertise in these sectors to be realised.
	I am sure that no one in this Chamber needs reminding of the unemployment challenge that this country faces. Every day, Members of this House deal with letters and e-mails from constituents who have lost their jobs and are unable to find another. People feel helpless, frustrated, distressed and utterly let down. Who can blame them? The recession is having a devastating effect on employment around the country. No industry or geographical area remains immune from this downturn and the people of Britain are dealing with its harsh realities every day.
	What has been the Government's reaction to this crisis? Have they taken immediate action to help people now? Sadly not; unemployment has been rising constantly for more than a year, yet the Government closed an average of one jobcentre a week in 2008. As late as last July, Ministers were still issuing press releases patting themselves on the back for record levels of employment, and brushing the unemployment problem to one side. As Ministers were reminding us that we should see the rise in jobseeker's allowance "in context", perhaps I can provide a little context for the Government, in the hope that it will get them to face up to the problems that we face.
	There are 1.97 million people unemployed. Youth unemployment is at its highest level since 1995. There are record redundancies, combined with the lowest level of vacancies since records began. Jobseeker's allowance claims are up by 55 per cent. in one year, with the claimant count smashing through the 1 million mark, and there are over 130,000 fewer jobs in the economy since June last year. The reality is that Britain now faces an unemployment crisis.
	Yet there is still no real action from the Government. Instead, true to form, they have given us only empty promises. In October, the Government announced £50 million of help for people "currently facing redundancy". Five months on, how many have received that help? None. Why? Because the projects will not start until April. In December, the Government announced £79 million of funding. Two months later, they reannounced that help. Only then was it revealed that no new employment programmes would be in place as a result of that money until the end of this year.
	The golden hello scheme was announced in January. We welcomed that—the Government had finally taken up the proposal for tax breaks for new jobs that we announced in November, but again nothing will happen until April. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced in an interview with a newspaper that he was spending £40 million to provide extra support for white-collar workers with one-to-one interviews, which they are supposed to have anyway, and the creation of job clubs, which some job centres, such as the one in Maidenhead, already run.
	We should pity the poor unemployed white-collar worker who heard that and logged on to the Department for Work and Pensions website to find out more, because there is no more information. Indeed, the announcement is not even on the DWP website. So what sort of commitment is it? Is it new money? How many job clubs will be created? Where will they be, and crucially, when will what has been announced happen? I cannot refer to job clubs without mentioning the excellent work that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has done in setting up a job club in his constituency, which I am looking forward to visiting this Friday. I am sure that many people will be helped by it.
	If press releases created jobs, we could believe the Government's proclamations that they are offering real help now. Unfortunately, far too many people who are struggling to find work each day know that that simply is not the case. One of the reasons why the Government have been so complacent about tackling the unemployment crisis is their complete inability to acknowledge what caused the problems that Britain now faces. This is a global recession, but Britain entered it worse prepared than almost any other developed economy. If it is all America's fault, why has the value of the pound plummeted against that of the dollar? Why is the UK's economy predicted to be worse hit than any other major economy, and why has the OECD predicted that unemployment will rise faster in the UK than in any other G7 country?
	If the Prime Minister cannot admit the mistakes that he has made, he cannot help the British economy out of this recession, so perhaps this afternoon the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will follow the advice of the noble Lord Malloch-Brown and take this opportunity to apologise to the 1.97 million people in the UK today who cannot find a job.

Theresa May: I say to the hon. Lady that when the Conservatives left government, unemployment was coming down. Crucially, youth unemployment was coming down. Under this Government, unemployment is going up, and is predicted to go through the 2 million mark. The Government have an abysmal record on employment. After 10 years of economic growth, almost 5 million people are on out-of-work benefits. The Government boast of creating 3 million new jobs, but up to 80 per cent. of them went to foreign-born workers. There are pockets of deprivation where well over half of people are claiming out-of-work benefits, and we have the highest proportion of children growing up in workless households in the whole European Union. The challenge of dealing with rising unemployment is deepened by the huge figures for those already claiming out-of-work benefit. That is how prepared the UK was for the downturn under this Government.
	In the past few weeks, I have spoken to jobcentre staff and unemployed people, spent time with providers of welfare to work services and listened to the experiences of my constituents. When someone becomes unemployed, they understandably often turn to the state for help, and usually they go to their local jobcentre for that help. What they badly need is support, advice, knowledge and reassurance, but the question that the Government must ask themselves is whether the Jobcentre Plus network can provide all those things. Despite grand announcements of billions of pounds of funding and thousands more staff, the reality is that the Government are just reversing previous cuts, not providing additional help.

Theresa May: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for referring to the experience that he quoted. Experience is patchy across the country and there are many areas where— [Interruption.] Ministers on the Front Bench sneer at that, but they should not do so. In some areas people have had to find charitable support because their claims are taking so long to get through Jobcentre Plus. What is happening is not something to be sneered at; it is seriously affecting people at some jobcentres. Such delays are one of the issues with Jobcentre Plus. Giving people the fast, targeted and relevant support that they need is vital, yet all too often the processes can be slow, cumbersome and generic. We should be able to provide a smarter and more efficient service.
	As I said a few minutes ago, I am sure that everybody in the House will join me in saying that Jobcentre Plus staff are doing the best that they can in incredibly difficult circumstances; any steps that the Government take to streamline the processes that those staff deal with every day will be welcome. Creating a jobcentre system that is fit for purpose is an essential weapon in the battle to tackle unemployment.
	What of the services that the Government offer the unemployed? They launched the new deal, their flagship programme, in a blaze of glory, but it can be described at best as a damp squib and at worst as a damning indictment of the Government's failure properly to grasp the challenge of unemployment. In 2008, less than 30 per cent. of the new deal participants found a job. One third of participants on the new deal for young people had been on the programme at least once before, and that figure rises to 40 per cent. for the new deal 25-plus. There can be no denying that the new deal is an abject failure. Half all young jobseekers who leave the new deal for young people end up back on benefits within the year. I hope that when he responds, the Secretary of State will accept the failings of the new deal system—

Theresa May: I could not have put it better myself; my hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point.  [ Interruption. ] We hear laughter from the Government Front Bench—laughter about the fact that so many young people are not in education, employment or training, and that their life chances are being affected as a direct result of decisions taken by this Government. It does not look from the reaction that we have had so far as if this is going to be possible, but I had hoped that Ministers might want to accept that reform is desperately needed.  [ Interruption. ] I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) for pointing out to me the increase in the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training. Over the period from 2007 to 2008, there was an increase from 655,000 to 857,000, so 200,000 more young people are in that position.

Theresa May: I am very conscious of what the Select Committee report said about this point. As my hon. Friend says, it raised some genuine questions about what the Government are doing. We need some clarification from the Secretary of State as to where things stand on the flexible new deal, because the numbers have increased. I would have hoped that the scheme would resolve some of the problems that we have seen with the Government's new deal programme, but not only have concerns been expressed in the Select Committee report, but there has been a lot of speculation in the press that there are considerable problems with the contracting process and that the October start date is in jeopardy. I hope that today the Secretary of State will be able to guarantee to the House that the flexible new deal will start in October, as promised.
	However, that scheme represents only small steps towards the kind of welfare reform for which my party has been calling for years. I hope that the Government will be in a listening mood and that we can finally persuade them to take proper measures to tackle this recession and the unemployment crisis. First, we need a proper national loan guarantee scheme, because businesses need to get credit flowing again; then firms can keep people in their jobs and the unemployment rate can be checked. We urgently need to protect the jobs that exist. I hope that the Secretary of State will accept the need to introduce a proper scheme that covers all businesses of all sizes and in all industries.
	Secondly, we need more support, and sooner, for everyone who is unemployed. The flexible new deal will bring the wait for support down from 18 months to 12, but that is still too long. Under Conservative welfare reform proposals, no one will have to wait more than six months for a personalised employment programme, and for those under 21 support will be available after three months. Youth unemployment is at its highest point since 1995, and it is essential that people just starting out in their working lives do not become detached from and disheartened about the whole process of trying to find work. For everybody who has been unemployed for three months or more, we are calling on the Government to provide employers tax cuts for new jobs. With a record low of vacancies in the economy, it is essential people have the skills to allow them to compete for every job they want to, so we need to relax jobseeker's allowance rules to allow everyone the opportunity to go on a full-time training course from day one of their claim. This is not the time for half measures and timid steps forward. I urge the Secretary of State to be brave and to take the proper action that these times call for.
	In the past few weeks, the Secretary of State and the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform have been keen to reassure us that jobcentres are better because they no longer look like those seen in the film "The Full Monty". I have been somewhat bemused by their preoccupation with that issue, for what matters is not what the job centre looks like, but the service that it can offer. Whether someone is blue collar or white collar, when they lose their job such distinctions seem immaterial—they just want help and they want it as soon as possible.
	The last 12 years of Labour government have left us woefully ill-prepared to deal with this recession and its impact on employment, but I call on the Secretary of State to prove his progressive credentials and to adopt our proposed measures. That would offer immediate help to people worried about their jobs and to people waking up everyday without a job to go to, and it would make a real difference to the lives of millions of people.

James Purnell: The first test of a serious Opposition is being able to say how policies are funded, and they have completely failed that test today. As is so often the case when people try to divert attention from the fact that they are embarrassed about their policy, all the Opposition have succeeded in doing is to draw attention to the fact that they would cut £2 billion from the budget. That is why, as my hon. Friend says, their motion is a mixture of straw men and fantasy policies. Their policy on national insurance is a fantasy policy; they have absolutely no way of funding it. They cannot say that they will cut tax on employers without saying where the money will come from. That is a fantasy policy—the sort of thing that the Liberal Democrats do most of the time. I would have thought that they at least aspired to meet the test of being more intellectually credible than the Liberal Democrats, but they have failed in that as well.
	The right hon. Member for Maidenhead says that people should be able to train from day one. That is a straw man: they can train from day one, as long as they are looking for work. People are doing that all around the country. The Opposition want to say that they would increase the pace at which the invest to save policy is rolled out. That is our policy, so that is another straw man. If they are saying that that would fund the £2 billion hole in their spending plans, it is not just a straw man, but a fantasy policy as well.

James Purnell: The right hon. Lady's new boss—I am sorry to mention him again—said clearly that it would
	"take at least six years to roll out a full system of provider contracts",
	which is exactly what we are doing. She is obviously happy to have him as a Tory Front Bencher, but she cannot say that he is right and then suddenly say that he was talking nonsense when he said that we were proceeding at the right pace. I am glad that she agrees with our policy on introducing that system.
	The Opposition's motion is a do-nothing motion. They are not prepared to spend the money, so it is a motion full of fantasy policies. This is not just a theoretical debate, it is about real people. Every time someone loses— [Interruption.] They might want to listen to this, because it is about real people. Every time someone loses their job it is a crisis, but the fundamental thing to do to prevent it from becoming a tragedy is to help people back into work as quickly as possible. The inability to do that was not a theoretical debate in the past, it was Government policy. In the 1990s' recession, the number of people claiming incapacity benefit increased by half a million. The unspoken Government policy at the time was to shift people off the unemployment roll and classify them as sick and disabled. As if that were not a sick enough policy, the truly sick thing about it was that when people were put on to benefits, they were given no help to get better and no help to get back into work. It is because of this Government that people are getting that help.
	The reason unemployment was considered a price worth paying under the Conservative Government was simple: they were not prepared to spend the necessary money on employment services. The people who paid the price for their policy were the long-term unemployed. We are determined to ensure that that does not happen again.

James Purnell: Actually, my right hon. Friend said that we have to look at that, and that is what we are doing. One of the uses to which we are putting the money from the pre-Budget report is increasing the amount going to the flexible new deal, precisely because the costings are increasing. However, the hon. Gentleman can ask me about that issue again when I turn to it later in my speech.
	I was glad that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead recognised that job clubs already exist. Perhaps she should tell the Leader of the Opposition, because he keeps saying that we should introduce them. The truth is that job clubs continued after her Government lost power, but we modernised them, contracting with the private and voluntary service providers to deliver them. What we announced yesterday was an extra £40 million to ensure that we can widen the service and ensure that everybody gets a service that is personalised to them, so that, for instance, professionals and blue-collar workers get the right service for them.
	That is exactly the right thing to do and, since the right hon. Lady asked, the programme will start in April, along with the rest of the six-month offer.  [ Interruption. ] She says, "Along with everything else," but that is when we said we would introduce the programme. We announced in January that we would introduce it in April and we will introduce it in April. She may not realise that the difference between being in opposition and being in government is that people actually have to do things in government—they cannot just put out a press release on something and somehow it magically comes along. When people want to do things in government, they need a certain amount of time to implement them. We said that the programme would start in April and it will start in April.
	Let me turn to welfare reform. As I am sure the right hon. Lady would agree, the Government have made strong—and in some respects remarkable—progress on welfare reform over the past 10 years. That is a genuinely impressive record. Does she disagree with the soon-to-be-Lord Freud's views on that issue? No. So I am sure that she will agree with him that we have made remarkable progress over the past 10 years. She will welcome the fact that 300,000 more lone parents are in work now than in 1997. She said that the level of people on sickness benefits was too high in this country. Actually, it was lower than in Finland, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Australia and the United States. This country was at the bottom of the league of international comparison, precisely because we reformed the welfare state and had a labour market that got people into work.

James Purnell: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has seen the letter in the Library from our head of statistics on 13 February—before the press speculation, therefore—which explains precisely why, in his professional judgment, he has to wait for the figures to be validated before they are issued in a parliamentary answer. We have to follow the advice of our head statistician.
	I am happy to speak to the hon. Gentleman about the policy in general, however. Overall, private and voluntary sector providers have helped us to improve performance significantly. Last year, they got more people into work than the year before, despite the fact that the economy was declining. However, that is in no way to criticise Jobcentre Plus or to say that it does not have a fundamental role; rather, the truth is exactly the opposite. It has always been a false choice between public and private. The point is to have a system that, through competition, gets the best out of both and ensures that people can get the contracts that they can best deliver.
	With pathways to work, we also had a number of teething problems when Jobcentre Plus started working with those groups. Hon. Members might remember people who had been on incapacity benefit—often for a long time—being subject to mandatory referrals. We recognise that we need to improve performance—that is an issue for our providers, but it is also an issue for us and for Jobcentre Plus. We need to work on how we are referring people to those private providers and ensure that our systems are properly integrated. That is what we are working on, and performance is already improving. As soon as the figures are validated, we will release them through a parliamentary answer.
	The right hon. Lady asked me about the flexible new deal. There is no mystery about this. Jobcentre Plus has had to change its plans and get more money, to reflect the fact that unemployment is rising, and we have had to do exactly the same thing with the FND. Doing that with private providers in the middle of a contracting process has meant that we had to write to them and ask them to amend their plans, which they have done. We continue to be committed to getting this in in October, so, far from being in crisis, as the right hon. Lady's motion says, all that is happening is that we are adapting the policy to reflect the fact that the economic situation has changed since we started the contracting process. I hope she will withdraw the allegation that the system is in crisis.

Oliver Heald: Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that the problems are going to relate not only to those with significant skills who are going to find work fairly quickly? There will also be a big rise in the long-term unemployment as people with skills that would have got them a job a year ago will not find a job very quickly in the current climate. The estimate that we on the Select Committee were given was that there would be a three to fourfold increase in long-term unemployment over the next three years. Does the Secretary of State agree with that estimate?

Paul Rowen: Like the hon. Gentleman, I met the local Jobcentre Plus manager to discuss that. To be fair, I know that there were some problems with the receivers in allowing Jobcentre Plus staff into Woolworths, but once those redundancies had happened, the help referred to in the motion tabled by the official Opposition and in our amendment to it was not available—it is not there at the moment. That is one of the main differences between the policies of the Opposition parties and Government policy.
	Many people who are currently not long-term unemployed have never been unemployed before. The lady I referred to worked at Woolworths for 35 years, but suddenly she finds herself redundant. Those people need advice not only on benefits and job seeking, but on debt counselling and mortgage advice, which my constituent referred to. If someone's weekly income suddenly drops from £500 a week to £60.50, radical lifestyle changes are needed, and people need support and help to make those changes. Those changes and that help are not available at the moment, but the Government amendment to the motion and Government policy reiterate support for the Government's welfare reform proposals and the flexible new deal.
	There is an almost daily drip of the announcement of new initiatives. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced £45 million for white collar workers, but where is the coherent strategy? What help is coercion of the long-term unemployed when those newly unemployed have to wait 12 months before they can access the full range of services that Jobcentre Plus has to offer? How are young people such as those who started a new deal for young people programme after six months out of work helped by that period being changed to 12 months? Those policies were written for the labour market of two years ago and are totally inadequate for the current circumstances.
	The Work and Pensions Committee report "DWP's Commissioning Strategy and the Flexible New Deal", published last week, raised major concerns, including whether the £236 million budget for phase 1 is enough. The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion has estimated that to achieve the flexible new deal targets, an additional £1 billion would be needed in 2009-10. Can the 37.5 per cent. improvement in job outcome performance over what has been achieved by DWP contractors in the past be met in the context of a significant reduction in funding? What is the evidence base for the wholesale marketisation of welfare-to-work provision in the United Kingdom?
	The position has not been helped by reports in  The Observer at the weekend suggesting that the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform had suppressed figures showing that private firms
	"placed just 6 per cent. of incapacity benefit claimants on their books into work, rather than the 26 per cent. they had claimed would be possible when they bid for contracts. This compared to 14 per cent. achieved by state job centres during the same period."
	I note the Secretary of State's response, but perhaps he should remind the Prime Minister of the rules regarding the release of statistics. He certainly did not apply the same strictures when it came to the release of knife crime figures.
	Ideologically, as Liberal Democrats we are not opposed to marketisation, although we are concerned about the headlong rush into it with what appear to be inadequate resources. The DWP's own research, shown in the review of adviser discretion released on 16 February, showed that
	"advisers... believe they could get better results if they had discretion".
	We agree with that, and would give people the help that they need from day one.
	Both the Government and the Conservative Opposition propose giving employers subsidies for taking on unemployed people. In January the Government proposed £2,500 golden hellos, while the Conservatives have proposed tax breaks for those taking on unemployed people which would cost £3 billion. Where is the evidence that that sort of generalised employment scheme works? Back in the 1980s and 1990s there were numerous employment schemes, including the national insurance contribution holiday, which ran from April 1996 until 1999. It was expected to attract 130,000 applicants, but there were only 2,718 applications. The work start scheme ran from July 1993 until April 1998. John Atkinson of the Institute of Employment Studies found that the
	"NIC Holiday appeared to be a bonus for recruiting a long-term unemployed person, rather than an incentive for so doing."
	We fear that, regrettably, the Government's golden hello and the Conservatives' national insurance holiday are likely to have the same result.
	The real problem facing businesses and stopping them from recruiting is not just a lack of credit, but a real and prolonged lack of demand for their goods and services. That is why the Liberal Democrats' proposal to launch a "green road" out of the recession, using the £12.5 billion currently being used to fund the VAT reduction, is so important. It will fund insulation and energy efficiency schemes in 2 million homes, and will begin a five-year programme to insulate every school and hospital.

Paul Rowen: I do agree. We would expect between 90,000 and 100,000 extra jobs to be created with that £12.5 billion if our proposals were implemented. We consider ours to be a more constructive and long-lasting approach. We would build 40,000 extra zero-carbon homes and provide a raft of public transport schemes that together would create 100,000 jobs. Most of the money would be spent now, this year—not in the future—and would leave us with a lasting legacy that would save energy, reduce fuel bills and fight climate change. It is supported by the Renewable Energy Association, which has argued that investment is essential to ensure that the UK catches up on what Europe, the US and China have already committed towards green energy. Investment in people—their skills, homes and communities—is the best way to demonstrate faith in people and show that that "Yes we can" approach can be adopted.
	We need flexibility and a willingness to adapt and build on the strengths of our communities. Last year, part of my constituency, Falinge, was highlighted by the media as the "benefit capital of Europe", ranked the worst in England—and the Secretary of State visited it. In addition, it is ranked third worst for people with poor health, sixth worst for income and 15th worst in overall deprivation. It is very easy in the current climate to give up on areas such as Falinge. However, that has not happened in Rochdale; the council, the Jobcentre Plus, the primary care trust, the police, churches and the local community have come together to develop, first, the key themes, and then key areas of transformation. Over the past six months, more than 350 people have taken part in that process. That process comes to a head today, when all members of the local strategic partnership board are touring the estate and meeting residents. There is a plan and there is a range of activities, but, above all, there is a belief that things can be changed for the better. That commitment, flexibility and support for the long term is what is needed not just locally, but nationally and globally.

Alan Simpson: I am pleased to follow on from the concluding comments of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), because it is terribly important that this debate does not end up as a contest between different parties in which they make comparative claims as to who can offer the better quality of unemployment. Somehow, we have to reach beyond the merits, or otherwise, of jobcentres and Jobcentre Plus, to address the nature of employment in the UK, rather than the quality of unemployment.
	Probably the only good thing that we can say about any recession is that it gives the Government of the day, and the country, the chance to come out at a different place from where we went in. We do not have to try to reconstruct parts of the economy that have gone into recession and contraction, and that probably are not suited to the nature of the economy in which our children and grandchildren will have to find a secure place. So we can use the trauma of a recession to give ourselves a transformation moment, and that is what the House needs to discuss.
	That transformation moment must address not only where the work will be, but how we will create a society that is able to meet other non-negotiable obligations that we will all have to meet. That includes dramatic reductions in our carbon emissions—how we will achieve reductions in the ecological footprints that we place on society. I want to try to address the issue of unemployment in relation to those unavoidable obligations, and this is the key question that I want to ask of all parties and Members: where are the jobs that we see ourselves seeking to construct, in a society that will be able to live sustainably as we come out of the recession?
	In the past couple of weeks there have been two important reports that should be shaping this debate. This week, there was a report from the Met Office Hadley centre in Exeter, which said that, on our current policies, if all goes well we still probably have only a 50:50 chance of surviving this century. By implication—and, in some cases, quite directly—it is saying that nothing in the current framework of public policy, other than "a flip of a coin" prospect will deliver the scale of carbon reductions that will allow society to survive in any civilised way by the end of the century. It is telling us that we need a dramatic shift in our priorities, in our intervention strategies and in the jobs we seek to deliver in order to get us out of the mess we are in and into a different future.
	The second report that should frame the terms of reference of this debate is "A Climate for Recovery", which was produced by HSBC. It is an assessment of the intervention packages pursued by different Governments around the world in trying to address the recession into which we have all been thrown. It looks at how far the nature of our intervention strategies relates to a transformation moment rather than a recreation of the past. The report specifically produced a league table placing different countries in a pecking order based on their green stimuli. A great deal of publicity has been given to that, both in the UK and in other countries.
	The difficulty is the gap between what we claim and what we do. Just before the Prime Minister gave his press conference about this issue last week, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and Al Gore had a letter published in the  Financial Times. In that letter, they not only warned about the consequences of and threats to the world from climate change, but they pointed out the opportunities. They said that, worldwide, there are now more jobs in renewable energy industries than in the entirety of the gas and oil sectors. They thought that this represented not just a policy choice and shift but a real opportunity to bring together employment agendas and strategies for getting out of global crises.
	However, the HSBC report pointed out that, although Britain tries to claim that it wants to lead the world from the front, only £1.5 billion of our current economic recovery package goes into green initiatives and green stimuli. By comparison, France is spending three times as much, Germany is spending six times as much and China is spending 110 times as much, in straightforward cash terms. Britain may wish to lead the world, but it is difficult to do so from the back of the pack.
	To address the point slightly differently, I should point out that Lord Stern has said that in order for us to have a viable and sustainable economy for the future, this country needs to be spending about 20 per cent. of its economic recovery packages on green investments. The tragic thing is that the current figure for the UK is about 6 per cent. Even on those percentage terms, the UK compares badly with other countries facing the same recessionary problems. Germany is spending 13 per cent. of its economic recovery package on green stimuli, and the figures for France, China and South Korea are 21, 38 and 81 per cent. respectively. Those are real resources going into a green transformation to deliver sustainable jobs for a sustainable future.
	It is somewhat embarrassing to read the HSBC report, because the UK is one of only three of the evaluated countries that it puts into a category referred to as "pending". I do not think that we have a way out of the recession if our intervention measures cannot get beyond the category of "pending". It is the gap between the promises and the delivery that leaves us in this "pending" category. I do not doubt for one moment the good intentions of Ministers and Secretaries of State in different Departments. The difficulty is levering the matter out of the Treasury, so that the recovery measures for the real economy can be at least as generous as they have been for the financial economy, which got us into the mess in the first place.
	The real challenge that we have to address is the fact that the Government, as well as the Opposition parties, need an employment strategy, not an unemployment strategy. It is not enough for the Opposition to table a motion that barely mentions an employment strategy. That is the great weakness of what the House is being invited to vote on today.
	It is helpful that at least the motion refers to the national loan guarantee scheme. I thought that it said a lot about the Opposition that it was not mentioned at all in the speech made by their Front-Bench spokesperson. It fell to the Secretary of State to refer to the scheme, but at least there is recognition that it is an important part of the platform that we have to address. My concern is that the House should describe fairly specifically the nature of the scheme.
	I invite the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, the Secretary of State and the House to consider the model for such a scheme that can be found in a microcosm of the UK economy. In Kirklees, a remarkable initiative known as the RE-Charge scheme has offered households interest-free loans of up to £10,000—as a second charge against the house, redeemable only at the point of sale—to enable them to shift into energy-saving and energy-generating systems. The response has been overwhelming. The lesson for us is that giving the public the chance to make that shift shows a hunger in the land to live more sustainably and more lightly than we do at the moment. We need to start to attach such conditions to the way in which a national loan guarantee scheme should work.
	It is not enough to talk about guaranteeing a business just because it is in business. We have to use the levers of intervention mechanisms to deliver a business that will be fit for the future rather than a legacy of the past. The way in which the scheme needs to be extended has been set out for us in the references made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) to the follow-up report produced by the Renewable Energy Association.
	I am sure that other organisations around the country are able to spell out where the jobs might be, but the REA is the first that I have come across that has tried to do so. It has said to the Government, for instance, that if we were to expand the low-carbon building programme to deliver 70,000 renewable energy systems in the next two years, that could deliver 10,000 jobs. Those jobs would go to people in the construction industry who are being discarded from jobs and who have skills, rather than our having to deliver those skills from scratch. The tragedy is that, if we lose the skills, by the time we make that transformation the only people who we will find to do the work will probably be in France, Germany or other parts of Europe, where they are already intervening to give themselves the skills base, and the jobs base, for a different future. If we were to extend the programme, that would allow the Government to deliver the commitments that we have made to turn 7 million houses in the UK into energy-efficient houses by 2020. We will need those skills if we are to make that transformation and act even remotely to timetable.
	If we extend the thinking behind the conditionalities of the national loan guarantee scheme, we can see how it could impact in various other sectors. In transport, for instance, we should not offer loan guarantees for the purchase of yesterday's vehicles instead of tomorrow's. Germany has introduced a scrapping scheme under which people are paid incentives to trade in their old cars in favour of low-carbon vehicles—the vehicles of tomorrow. The scheme will keep people in car manufacturing in work, but for tomorrow's models rather than yesterday's.
	Britain could do the same. To underpin the 2012 Olympics, the Government could make a simple commitment to convert 500 buses and other vehicles in London to run on biomethane. That shift in sustainability could be part of a national strategy to provide jobs, vehicles and transport systems, and it is an example of the direction in which we must move.
	In the energy sector, we need to bring forward our commitment to feed-in tariffs. We must not allow their introduction to slip back to 2010, because we need them this year. We need Government funding for demonstration projects on heat networks, biogas injection into the grid, smart grids and decentralised transmission networks. We also have to remove restrictions on the carbon emissions reduction targets—CERT—so that we can replace the 4 million band G boilers. All of those changes would translate into jobs, and that will be the test against which the Government are judged.
	The Government should not be judged on promises, or on the network of jobcentres or Jobcentre Plus offices. They should be judged on where the jobs will be delivered tomorrow. It is right for the UK to want to lead the world, but to do that we have to change the plan. If that is going to happen, it will be driven by deeds from the front, not by words from the back.

Graham Brady: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). In his contribution he made up in quality for the lack of quantity on the Government Benches that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) noted.
	I am also pleased to participate in a debate that is crucial, because unemployment is rising nationally. We have heard the figures that show the extent and rapidity of the rise, but some of the deeper analysis offers profound cause for concern. The House of Commons Library does a good monthly analysis that shows that unemployment in my constituency has risen by 88 per cent. in the past 12 months. That is by no means the highest increase, but on current trends it is not far below the point where it will have doubled in that period.
	The increase in unemployment has tended to be concentrated in the private rather than the public sector—in finance, property, retail and so-called "executive" jobs. The balance has changed, as has the distribution pattern for higher unemployment.

Graham Brady: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is right: worse is still to come. The trend in job losses continues to rise, and he has referred to a sector in the economy that has been especially harshly affected.
	Beyond that, we await the so-called "second order" effects in the economic crisis. Another crucial reason why we have to care so much about the rise in unemployment is that people who lose their jobs are more likely to default on their loans and mortgages. That will add to the problems in the banking and financial sector that are already afflicting us.
	Like a number of hon. Members who have spoken already today, I recently took the opportunity to visit my local jobcentre. I was hugely impressed by the dedication of the staff and managers, who over 12 months or so have had to cope with a dramatic increase in their work load. They are recruiting more staff, and are coping very well. They are acutely aware of the changing pattern and distribution of unemployment, and of the different kinds of clients with whom they have to deal.
	On the subject of the little exchanges that took place earlier on the subject of job clubs, and the appropriate kind of provision for the executive or white-collar unemployed, I found that the staff at my local jobcentre were happy to accept that in the recent past they had not needed that kind of provision, and that it needed to be augmented. They are alive to the issue, and are very open to propositions, some made by constituents who have recently been made unemployed. They are working with staff to try to move forward, and that is very welcome.
	The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) raised concerns about private sector welfare-to-work provision, but my local jobcentre is very relaxed about the mixture, and about the use of private sector provision, when it can be brought in most effectively. It is many years since I served on the Employment Sub-Committee of what was then the Select Committee on Education and Employment; I did so in the 1997 Parliament, when the new deal was first introduced. I vividly remember that when the Committee went to New York to see the nature of the active labour market policy being pursued there, we were astonished, even then, to see the quality of some of the provision from the private sector and voluntary organisations. They were delivering far better outcomes, in terms of people being placed in sustainable work, than was typically the case under the new deal in this country. They were also doing that work at a dramatically lower cost.
	I have become less involved in that aspect of policy over the years, but I have watched with fascination as the Government have regularly said that they accept that that can be the case. They say that they are determined to introduce those different methods, and will move forward on that, but so little seems to happen. That is frustrating, because from listening to earlier exchanges it seems that Members on both sides of the House agree that the private sector can contribute. There is a huge amount of evidence internationally on ways in which that can happen, but we are still debating the subject all these years later. Organisations such as Wildcat, which I saw in New York, were brought before the then Department for Education and Employment to advise us on how the new deal might be improved, but there has been tragically little effect, compared with what we saw all those years ago.
	The cost of the new deal has always been a significant concern. All that time ago, I made my own estimates; my very conservative estimate was that it cost £11,000 for every job created. The Minister at the time—I think that it was the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell)—estimated that the cost was more like £4,000. The Select Committee—I think that at the time, I was the only Opposition Member serving on it—noted in its report that we believed that the Minister's figure was a significant underestimate. The cost was certainly between £5,000 and £11,000 per job created through the new deal. Other programmes—not just internationally but in this country—have been shown to deliver better outcomes at significantly lower cost.
	In the early years of the new deal, I remember seeing evidence submitted by the Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit; it flagged up, even then, the danger of young people, in particular, moving in and out of employment, becoming disillusioned as a result, and regarding themselves as being trapped in a revolving-door system. Over the years, I have followed the extent to which that revolving-door system appeared to be present in the new deal programmes, and I have periodically tabled written questions to establish how many people are passing through that revolving door.
	Perhaps it is time to ask the question again. On 18 February 2008 I received an answer pointing out that the total number who had entered the new deal for young people was 1.25 million. The number of those who had entered only once was 890,000. Nearly 250,000 had entered twice, and nearly 80,000 had been through three times. That is a huge number of young people who have been going into new deal programmes, typically from long periods of unemployment, sometimes finding brief periods of work afterwards, then going back into new deal programmes, or returning to unemployment and to further new deal programmes.
	Earlier we heard the old claims about unemployment statistics and the method of counting being changed. It is important that we remember the effect of the new deal revolving door in the context of the Government's claims about long-term unemployment. They claim that long-term unemployment has fallen dramatically over the past decade or so, but once people have been through the new deal programme, they come off the long-term unemployment count. Even if they do not get sustainable work and go back into a new deal programme, they are no longer long-term unemployed.
	We have in those figures the evidence that a huge number of people are, to all intents and purposes, long-term unemployed. They have not been finding sustainable, worthwhile, productive work. Instead, they have been kept off the statistics by being put through a programme that potentially costs up to £11,000, or perhaps more, every time somebody gets into employment. The cost per individual going through the merry-go-round is immense. We might not be too concerned about the cost if they were going through into genuine long-term sustainable employment, but when they are not doing so, the cost is unforgivable. In the current economic climate it is incumbent on the Government to look carefully at that, and to recognise that the cost cannot be justified at those rates of return.
	It was recognised seven or eight years ago that 40 per cent. of people would never go into sustained jobs from the new deal schemes. The definition of a sustained job was remarkably easy to meet: it meant going into employment for a period of just 13 weeks. Being in employment for three months counted as moving into sustainable employment. That definition was inadequate for the purpose.
	We know that the new deal was not a great success even in the boom years of the past decade. I vividly recall the number of witnesses who gave us evidence at the outset of the new deal, as we were trying to establish how it would be possible to evaluate the success or failure of the scheme. They said that it would be difficult ever to evaluate the success or failure of such a scheme, especially because all the evidence is that active labour market policies are more likely to be effective in a time of economic growth and tight labour markets, when people are getting work anyway. The schemes are much better at assisting people into employment when they might have got into employment in a little while in any case than they are at creating new opportunities that did not exist at all.
	That is a serious concern for us. Programmes that have, at best, been achieving modest results at significant costs in the economic circumstances that best suit them may now achieve even worse outcomes in adverse circumstances.
	In an intervention, I mentioned the Treasury Committee's visits around the United Kingdom in the past 10 days or so. Some of the themes that I have mentioned have come through clearly in the meetings. What we have found most striking is not only the level of unemployment that already exists, and the concern about that, but the palpable fear of unemployment. We visited Belfast, Edinburgh and Leeds, but we saw that fear most particularly in Halifax last night. HBOS has dominated employment in the town, and a huge number of people there are living in considerable fear for their future and their livelihood.
	It is vital that we work to help the existing unemployed back into work, but I would like to emphasise a point that arose earlier. It is critical that we do everything possible to ensure that people who need not become unemployed are kept in work. That is much easier to achieve; it is less costly and gives us far better prospects of maintaining economic success in other regards as well. On the recent visits, Treasury Committee members have been hearing endless stories, especially from small and medium-sized businesses, about the Government schemes and guarantees that have been promised but do not appear to be there when people visit the bank manager. Those schemes, such as the enterprise finance guarantee, need to have real and immediate effect. We have heard that there are massive problems with trade credit insurance. That is a huge difficulty for so many businesses, which may be faced with making redundancies if the problems are not overcome. Action needs to be taken, and quickly.
	Finally, I emphasise again the importance of helping people, not only for their economic well-being, but for the wider economic well-being of the country. If unemployment continues to rise as it has been rising, that will rapidly compound our economic problems in a worrying way.

Peter Bone: My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he fear that when jobs start to be created again they will go to the fit young people who are now being made redundant, so it will be much more difficult for people who have been long-term unemployed to get into work?

Oliver Heald: I totally accept my hon. Friend's point, which is the main point that I intended to make.
	Before doing so, I want to comment on what the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) said. It is important that we use the recession in a purposeful way to ensure that when we come out of it we have made improvements to the skills of our work force and created businesses in the green sphere so that green jobs are coming through. We should not just assume that in three years' time, or whenever the recession is finally over, the world will be the same as it is now. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we could do far more in the green sphere. In Germany, 250,000 photovoltaic plates are being put in each year for solar energy; last year in Britain, there were only 356. There are a whole range of other green opportunities that we should take, and with which the Government should do more.
	The grave threat in this recession is that we will see a massive rise in long-term unemployment. The reason why that is likely is that, looking at the overall jobs market, unemployment has risen very fast in the past year. The headline figure is 1.97 million, and it is up by 438,000 year on year. At the same time, vacancies have fallen by an alarming number. Monthly vacancies are down by 200,000 compared with 2007. Of the half a million or so vacancies, more than half are in sectors where jobs are hard to fill or there are skills shortages, so the actual number of jobs available for people to apply for is tiny relative to the numbers looking. I mentioned Woolworths earlier. We have lost stores in my constituency. A constituent from Letchworth wrote to me saying, "Where's all the extra help that we believed had been promised? We need it." She said that 22 people were looking for each job in the retail sector potentially available to someone from Woolies. The position as regards vacancies is particularly worrying.
	The chief economist of the Social Market Foundation gave evidence to the Select Committee about how he saw the way forward given the research that he and his colleagues have been doing. They believe, based on current economic projections, that the number of long-term unemployed—people who have been out of work for more than 12 months—is likely to increase by 300 to 400 per cent. over the next three years. Let us look at what that means. There are roughly 150,000 long-term unemployed at the moment, so to go up to 600,000 would be a huge increase. Every one of those represents a tale of somebody who is reaching despair by the time they have been out of work for a year.
	The flexible new deal is being introduced to help people who have been out of work for a year. The original estimates of how many clients there would be were much lower than they are now. The Government have written to the Select Committee saying that they expect the figure to be 300 per cent. higher than they originally thought. That fits in with the projection of the Social Market Foundation; it is not that far off. If there is a fourfold increase in long-term unemployment, that brings back the spectre of the horrific problems that long-term unemployment has caused in the past. It is not enough for the Government to say that they are talking to the contractors involved with the flexible new deal. The process is just not viable without proper resources, which need to be adequate for a large number of extra people.
	I am a fan of the flexible new deal. I was one of those, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), who criticised the early new deal because it was not flexible, and in my pamphlet, "Auditing The New Deal: What Figures For The Future?" in 2004, I proposed a flexible, personalised new deal using private contractors to help, and I cited the examples in America that my hon. Friend mentioned. It was well received—and I should mention my co-author, Mark Waldron, because he did a lot of the work. It set out the way forward to which the Government eventually came round, and I am pleased that the flexible new deal will go ahead. But let us not kid ourselves that we are now looking at the same proposition as introducing a flexible new deal that was intended for 150,000. It will end up having to cope, working in a detailed way, with 600,000 people. It will need a lot more resources, and it will have to be properly organised.
	My concern is that we are not organised adequately as a country to cope with the scale of the challenge of long-term unemployment. It is all very well to take shots at what happened in the 1980s, but the youth opportunities programme, which started in 1978, was a Labour scheme. It was already in trouble by the time the Conservatives won office in 1979, and was heavily criticised because it did not do enough for each young person. It continued to be criticised after the Government of Margaret Thatcher came in. The same is true of a range of schemes over the years; there is often criticism of them. The lesson is that the quality of such schemes is hard to maintain if they involve a large number of people, and the Government must consider that issue. If there is to be a large number of extra unemployed, we will need much greater provision in the job centres and in the flexible new deal. There is no way round that, and the Government need to come up with solid proposals to deal with it.
	We should use the recession to train the people of this country so that they have the skills they need. Some 5 million people in this country are functionally illiterate—unable, for example, to write to a bank and explain that they have changed address. It is a shattering thing that every year 40,000 young people leave our schools in that condition. We have a big problem, and it is sad that a lot of those young people are quite capable of learning to read and write. I remember a visit to Rainer in Sheffield, where I met a young man who had a few problems, and who wanted to be a dry liner. He had to learn to read to get his health and safety certificate. He learned to read very quickly—it took him about two months—but he had spent 11 years in our education system without managing to read and write properly. That is a staggering indictment. We should not be dealing with such problems when people are 19, but when they are seven, or six. It is important that we get literacy and numeracy right in this country.
	My other point about training concerns apprenticeships. The Government have made great claims about increasing the number of apprenticeships. We have never quite got the promised increase—I believe that the Prime Minister promised 320,000 places and we got 239,000—but apprenticeships are vital if we are to improve skills. I am worried about their quality, however. Traditionally, the academic standards underpinning an apprenticeship have been at level 3; it has basically been an A-level, but in a technical area.
	Now, most of the apprenticeships coming through are rebadged Government training schemes at a lower level. They are at level 2, and are not at A-level standard in technical subjects. The question is whether they will give people an advantage in employment. All the evidence is that the traditional level 3 apprenticeships give a great advantage, but there are fewer of those now. The level 2 apprenticeships are being used to top up the numbers.
	I make a plea to the Government to use this recession not just to paper over the cracks with poor-quality schemes but to get the training right for a change. We must ensure that when we come out of the recession, far more of our people can read, write and add up properly, and that young people who have been on apprenticeships genuinely have the skills that they need to do jobs in the future.

John Mason: I do not think that the people of Scotland want nuclear weapons or nuclear power—

John Mason: We want jobs in other ways. The money that is wasted on nuclear weapons would create many more jobs in the navy, the air force and the army that we would have as an independent country.
	We welcome the £120 million that is being brought forward in the affordable housing investment programme in Scotland. In comparison, in England, which is 10 times the size of our country, only £550 million is being provided, and it took three months longer to do it. That is disappointing, and I appeal to the Government to give the people of England as good a deal as people in Scotland are getting. The front-loading of European structural funds is welcome. Again, Scotland was well ahead with that compared with England.
	All parties agree that small businesses are important for jobs and the economy. In Scotland, they will get 100 per cent. rates relief from April if their rateable value is £7,000, whereas the relief is to be only 30 per cent. in England. Helping small businesses is a tremendous way of creating jobs and keep people in them. I recently met the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland, and there is much anxiety among small businesses in Scotland that the Government are too concerned about the banks and the big car companies, and not concerned enough about small businesses.
	I welcome the commitments made by both the Scottish and the UK Government to pay suppliers more quickly. That is extremely good, but sometimes large contractors do not pay smaller contractors as quickly, and deliberately hold back money. I wonder whether Companies House or some other body needs to be more proactive in forcing larger companies to pass on the payments, especially if they receive money from the public sector.
	I have already mentioned the cut in VAT. Did that really create the jobs that it could have done? It is estimated that the £1 billion has created some 7,200 jobs in Scotland, but a similar capital investment programme of that amount could well have created 14,900. I have some ridiculous personal examples of buying an electric shaver in Boots and clothes in Marks and Spencer. I see the price on the items and I am happy to pay it—I am on an extremely good salary. However, I get to the till to find that there are a few pounds off because of the reduction in VAT. The VAT cut has been badly targeted if it includes people like us, who are relatively so well paid.
	The Government often criticise the Conservative party for doing nothing, but I sometimes wonder whether they go to the other extreme and act simply for the sake of doing something. Perhaps that is the reason for the VAT cut—the Government felt that they just had to do something. Surely taking any action even if it is bad cannot be the way out of the current crisis.
	Last July, I promised my constituents that I would keep asking what was happening to the gap between the rich and the poor. Clearly, people at the bottom are currently losing their jobs, but so are people who are better off. The harsh Welfare Reform Bill will further damage those who are struggling and losing their jobs. Rather than punish people who realise that jobs are not there or that they pay so poorly, we could do with fewer sticks and more carrots. One such carrot would be better minimum pay for people who seek jobs. That would incentivise people more than taking away limited benefits. Meanwhile, well-off people, such as us, save in VAT. There is something wrong if some people are benefiting from the recession. Members of Parliament are better off through the recession while others lose out. Surely the richer people should tighten their belts as well as those who are less well off.
	Cutting public expenditure is not right in a recession. In the United States, President Obama's stimulus package is boosting spending in individual states. Yet in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we face cuts to our budgets.

David Evennett: I am pleased to participate in this important debate on unemployment in the UK. I do not want to follow the line of the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason), but I am delighted to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) and for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who made constructive and important points.
	The motion highlights the current position nationally and the Government's failure to introduce welfare reform during their time in office and to increase the flow of credit to businesses in the past six months to assist with the current economic and financial situation. The Government have also failed to relax the rules for jobseeker's allowance to allow unemployed people rapidly to take up training opportunities, which they often desperately need. That is regrettable.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) made a positive and enthusiastic speech about our policies to tackle the current position, and I was rather disappointed by the Secretary of State's response and his failure to take on board some of the serious problems that confront us.
	In my constituency postbag, e-mails and surgeries, mentions of the economy and unemployment have grown dramatically in the past few months. There are fears in our area of Bexley about the economic future and the employment prospects—a fear of people losing their jobs; a fear that they will be unable to pay their mortgage or rent; and a fear of the regular bills and of a decline in people's standard of living. Those are the issues that are affecting people and which are underpinning the current situation. Pensioners and those on fixed savings also fear that they are not getting enough income from their savings to supplement any other income that they may have.
	I want to say a few words about my constituency, but I also want to highlight the skills and training situation, as well as the shortages of skilled people and the lack of training opportunities for certain people who are unemployed, including the long-term unemployed. My constituents do not believe the Government—[Hon. Members: "Who does?"] Indeed. They believe that the Government have failed to tackle the skills shortages and benefit dependency, and that they have often used migrant workers to address employment shortages.
	We have had a lot of spin—we have had some from the Secretary of State this afternoon—and the restating of previous policy announcements, which we get regularly from this Government. That seems to be the order of the day, but it will no longer wash. When someone becomes unemployed, it is a tragedy for them, for their families, for the community that they live in and, of course, for the country. What people need is early intervention and early assistance, which are crucial in helping them get back into jobs. The majority of people want to get back into jobs as soon as possible. They do not want talk, investigations or generalisations; they want action. The Government need to commit to reforming Jobcentre Plus, so that there can be an in-depth assessment to evaluate claimants' needs and capabilities within 24 hours of a claim being presented. Urgent and immediate action is required.
	I want to say a few words about the Jobcentre Plus in my constituency. I visited it last year and met the district manager, the employees and a number of the clients. I had a useful morning seeing how Jobcentre Plus is endeavouring to help claimants. I have maintained regular contact since then—as I did before, of course. I have also received many comments from constituents about the service offered—many of them complimentary—and about how the staff have endeavoured to help with the problems that they face. I would like to commend the staff at that branch, because they are dedicated and hard working and because they are doing their very best to help people.
	There are issues that the staff cannot deal with, however, because there is a bigger picture. Most claimants in my constituency find work within six months of making their claim. However, in the last period for which figures are available, 17 per cent. did not, which shows how the economic situation is changing, which is regrettable.

David Evennett: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point and I agree with her entirely.
	Regrettably, we have a low skills level in this country. Despite all the money that has gone in and the Government's attempts and aspirations, the reality is that the situation is not good. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire that 5 million adults in Britain are classified as functionally illiterate, while 17 million are known to have problems with basic numeracy. It is a disaster that we should have such a skills shortage after so many years of investment in education and training. That is very worrying. Business potential is also restricted. I understand that three quarters of London businesses still have problems finding skilled staff. So many people are, regrettably, becoming unemployed, but they do not have the skills to be employed in businesses across Greater London.
	I raised with the Secretary of State my concern about the money that has been removed from community learning. I am a big supporter of community learning. Adult and community learning is an important route to training for many people who have been out of the labour market for a considerable time. Despite his put-down, there are 1.4 million fewer publicly funded places than in 2005. That is not good news.
	I mentioned to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training. That, too, is a disaster. Those people are losing opportunities as they do not have the skills that are needed. We need to ensure that they are in one of those three categories. Men are affected most; the number of males who are NEET has risen by 27 per cent., from 264,000 in 1997 to 336,500 in 2007. That is not success, but a failure to train and give people the opportunities to develop their potential. That is regrettable.
	I am also concerned that enrolments in further education are plummeting. Just when we need to be upskilling, training, retraining or reskilling people, FE enrolments are down. More money has gone in, but there are fewer learners. Targets have been missed on apprenticeships, as we heard from one of my hon. Friends earlier. All those things are regrettable at a time of economic deterioration. They need to be addressed by the Minister, who I know is a fair and reasonable woman. She needs to ask what more can be done to ensure that people are given the training and skills to take advantage of the situation.
	In view of the time, I will bring my remarks to a close. It is important that we have a positive, determined and upbeat approach to the issue. It was the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) who said that we should be positive—he was talking about the green agenda, which I support—but we need to ensure that that optimism is based on fact. This afternoon we heard wishful thinking from the Secretary of State rather than facts. We need to build hope and confidence for the future, but that requires more training and reskilling, to ensure that people who are unemployed are brought back into the labour market as they would want to be. The opportunities for the future have to be increased.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead highlighted our policies on those issues, which I shall not reiterate. The Government seem to be unable to act. They seem to be bankrupt of ideas and rather discredited in their dying days. We need a new approach, to ensure that the unemployed are at the top of our agenda, with policies to restore our battered economy and give people hope and opportunities at this difficult time.

David Jones: It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett). Members on both sides of the House have spoken about the recession's impact on employment in their respective constituencies and parts of the world. Indeed, the downturn has probably affected Wales and Welsh employment more severely than any other part of the country. In Wales, 100,000 people are now unemployed—some 7 per cent. of the economically active population, compared with the rate for the whole of the UK of 6.3 per cent.
	In the time available to me, I wish to draw the House's attention to two principal issues—the slow delivery of Government initiatives and the impact of the downturn on the building industry. The construction industry is of particular importance to north Wales. Traditionally, it has been a major employer, and a number of major regional builders have their headquarters there. The downturn has had its effect, however. Redrow Construction of Ewloe, for example, announced the loss of 350 jobs last year, and David McLean Holdings, another major employer, went into administration with the loss of 134 jobs. This pattern is being replicated on a smaller scale across the whole of north Wales.
	Many small builders are no longer building, not because they do not wish to do so—and not even, ironically, because of a lack of demand for their houses—but in many cases because they are simply unable to access funding from their banks. The principal of Beech Developments, a building firm in my constituency, tells me that he is anxious to begin to develop a site near Colwyn Bay over which he has an option. His company has been in existence for more than 12 years, has never operated on an overdraft, and has an exemplary credit history.
	Mr. Lee approached his bank, with which he has done business for very many years, but was told that it was impossible for him to obtain a loan to develop the site, because the bank had a blanket policy of not lending to builders. In fact, he was told that, because of that policy, it was not even worth approaching his bank's head office. Since then, Mr. Lee has approached several other banks and financial institutions, including Finance Wales, but none has been willing to provide him with the finance he needs. Consequently, that development will not take place, with the loss of 30 skilled jobs on a project that would have lasted at least two years.
	That pattern is being repeated up and down the country. Skilled building workers are unable to find work because the banks—in many cases, the banks that have received Government support—are operating a blanket policy of refusing to finance building projects. The construction industry is a major engine of the economy, and if that engine seizes, the upturn will be a very long time coming.
	The banks are clearly concerned about assessing property values and about saleability. However, the problem could be addressed if the Government were seriously to consider a properly funded national loan guarantee scheme, which the Conservative party has proposed, properly funded, to the tune of some £50 billion. The Government have their own scheme, which the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform unveiled last January. It is a far less ambitious proposal, worth only some £10 billion. Worse still, however, is the fact that the scheme has not yet been implemented.
	The Minister with responsibility for small businesses, Baroness Vadera, referred some time ago—somewhat optimistically, many thought—to perceiving signs of the green shoots of recovery in the economy. However, companies that are attempting to throw out green shoots in the current hostile landscape are finding that they are withering because of a lack of Government support. In truth, until the building industry gets going again, the economy will not get going either, and the prospects for employment in areas such as north Wales will be all the worse.
	The Government have adopted the slogan "Real help now", but the truth is that they are providing the vague promise of the potential of some help at some indeterminate period in the future. Initiative after initiative has been announced, but not yet implemented. A further example is the "golden hello" announced by the Secretary of State in January. We were told that it would provide an incentive of up to £2,500 for employers to recruit and train people who have been unemployed for more than six months.
	I should like to give a practical example of someone who was credulous enough to assume that the policy was up and running. A constituent of mine, Ms Jan Ross, the principal of Merrall-Ross International Ltd, a company that provides professional indexing services, decided that she would try to take up the offer. She found the experience most frustrating. Last week, I received an e-mail from her, which I think is worth reading:
	"I am the MD of a company based in North Wales and actually wish to recruit some new staff! I noted Gordon Brown's announcement of 12th January detailing 'golden hellos' for employers recruiting new staff. They seem to be elusive! I have tried the local Jobcentre Plus, the regional Jobcentre Plus, and they have tried a national Jobcentre office. I have e-mailed...the Department of Work and Pensions, the Treasury, phoned the Welsh Assembly, but alas no-one knows anything about it. Please can you take up my query and see if this was just pure hype by the Government or whether there is some substance to the announcement. What are the criteria and how does one go about obtaining help? We are a small SME, but growing, but need all the help we can get!"
	My research reveals that the scheme that was announced those two long months ago is still not up and running, but that it might be in operation some time in April. I hope that the Minister who replies to the debate will indicate whether the scheme still exists, whether it is to be implemented, and—most importantly, from the perspective of Ms Ross and others like her—when that is to happen. Or is this a case not of real help now, but of jam tomorrow, or possibly the day after?
	No one can deny that the problems besetting the country are worrying in the extreme. Hundreds of thousands of people right across the country live in constant fear of redundancy. No one can pretend, either, that the Government can possibly have all the answers, but the Government can help. Frankly, what they ought to be doing is not just promising again and again to introduce initiatives, but delivering real help. It is all very well for them to come up with rafts of new announcements and to unveil new initiatives, but if those measures are never implemented, they are worse than useless. They are cruelly raising the hopes of people who are already in a state of huge despair about their future. Those people need more than the promise of "real help". They need the substance, too.

Peter Bone: It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones), who made a powerful speech putting the position in north Wales into perspective.
	This debate has been interesting and wide ranging. I felt, however, that the Secretary of State got the mood of the House completely wrong in his opening remarks. Anyone who saw his performance, bouncing up and down at the Dispatch Box and taunting the Opposition, will have been very disappointed. We are talking today about the serious issue of unemployment, which really is not party political.
	Before I became a Member of Parliament, I had the unfortunate duty to make people redundant. Telling people that they no longer had a job was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. Many of them had worked for me for many years, and it was not their fault that they were losing their jobs. The mood of the House today has reflected situations such as those, with the exception of the Secretary of State's opening speech.
	I do not want to speak too long, but I want to raise two specific points that have not been made in the debate. First, however, I need to set my constituency in context. Unemployment in Wellingborough increased by nearly 100 per cent. increase over the past year. Jobcentre staff are doing an extremely good job, but it is very difficult for them to deal with what amounts to a 100 per cent. increase in their work load. They cannot provide the detailed support they would like to give to each claimant, as the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) said earlier. Claimants simply cannot be given the time and attention they deserve.
	Unfortunately, unemployment in Wellingborough is now 26 per cent. higher than it was in 1997. I remember the pressures on the Government at that time—a failing Government as people saw them then—when there was such massive unemployment. We see the same happening now, but the present Government show no real concern about what is happening out there in the country.
	My first point is about keeping people in work. Much of our debate has focused on how to help people who have lost their jobs, but it is important that we consider how to keep people in employment. I received a phone call yesterday from the managing director of a major employer in my constituency—I will not say who it is, but it is a major employer. This company has traded for many years and has run an extremely successful business. Like every other, however, it is seeing a downturn in demand—hardly surprising in the light of the recession expanding across the country.
	The managing director told me that the banks, instead of helping him, were making his life a misery. He told me that he had been with his bank for 40 years and that it had made a lot of money over that period, but instead of helping the company and asking how to make its life a bit easier by reducing interest rates, which the Government have cut nationally, to make it less painful, his bank proposed to increase interest by 2.5 per cent. That means that the company will have to pay £750,000 extra in a year.

Peter Bone: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I understand why my hon. Friend wanted to make that intervention, because what he told us is significant and tragic news for his constituents. I wish all those who have lost their jobs well. This reminds me of some of the problems I faced when I was in business. Leaders of a company—the chairman of the board or the managing director—sometimes have to fight desperately to keep it going, trying to find solutions by offering shares, for example, only for the bank to do the absolute opposite of what it should. It makes life more difficult and, in the case mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), the bank has forced the company into liquidation or administration.
	I remember my business receiving a £500,000 cheque from another company for some advance work, and the bank involved happened to be one of the now nationalised ones. It happily entertained me and took me to the very best cricket matches, irrespective of whether the company was doing well, yet just when we needed the money, the bank was not there. It did the opposite of what it should have done, demanding more fees and more interest. I am afraid that, as of yesterday, that is now the position of the company in my constituency. I do not want it to finish up in the same circumstances as my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow described. I repeat that it is one of the nationalised banks that is taking this action. I know that Ministers are also concerned and I also know that there is no magic wand, but I am highlighting a real problem in my own constituency. If we could get such problems sorted out, the potential to save jobs would be enormous.
	My second point deals with the other end of the scale, when people have lost their jobs. I had an Adjournment debate on the subject recently, but the point is worth making again. Forty people lost their jobs last December in a well respected company in my constituency, which had been in business for more than 100 years. The only way it could survive in business—by saving £600,000 a year in salaries—was by making those people redundant. Some of those employees had worked many years for the company—more than 30 years in some cases—so there was a £250,000 redundancy bill to pay. If it attempted to pay the redundancy money, the whole company would have gone under, with the remaining 80 people losing their jobs, too. The company therefore failed to pay the redundancy money, but the 40 people, who have been most restrained, have still not received their redundancy money.
	I do not blame the company for not paying it—if it had, the whole company would have gone under—and I do not blame the Government, but I think that there is a loophole in the law. The most obvious solution would have been for the redundancy payments office to step in and pay the redundancy money, subsequently claiming it back from the company over a number of years. In fact, there is a Government scheme that would have allowed that, but the problem is that the company has to approach the redundancy payments office first and negotiate with it; if the RPO is satisfied that the company is in financial need, it should pay the money.
	In reality, however, when people are fighting to save their family businesses and face circumstances that they have never faced before—when they are trying to deal with banks to get extended credit and to keep the company going while having the horrible job of telling people that they have lost their jobs—they are not going to go to the redundancy payments office to negotiate a settlement.
	My suggestion is to make a simple change in the law so that the RPO can be proactive and say to a company, "You've got a problem here; we'll pay the money and we'll try to get it back from you over a number of years if you trade out of the problem". That is not going to cost the Government any more money, because if the company fell the Government would have to pay the redundancy money. In this case, the company went into administration and the RPO will pay the workers in due course. In my view, however, the workers should have been paid in December because the company would have had more chance to trade out of its difficulties. Such a change in the law or change in attitude would not cost the Government anything, and would benefit many people.
	My final point is not at all party political. My constituency has had unemployment over a longer period and has seen immigration from central Europe. The problem is that some unemployed constituents blame the fact that they do not have a job on immigrants. This multi-ethnic area, which has had wonderful community relations in the past, now faces the problem of the British National party, which we never had before. We have to start talking about the issues and explaining what we are trying to do to solve the problem, but we cannot ignore it. We cannot say that there is not a problem and that people are not linking immigration with the fact that they do not have a job.

Dai Davies: I want to raise a few issues that I do not think have been touched on tonight. The first is how redundancy and closure programmes are announced. I was involved in a redundancy programme back in 2002. The people I worked with were told of the closure through the media, which does not seem to have changed over the past seven years. Lots of people are stressed enough worrying about their future without hearing about it through the media. I hope that companies in that situation will listen to that and tell their work force first, before telling the media.
	Secondly, I want to mention the 90-day consultation, which is set out in statute. The problem is that there is a huge difference between consultation and negotiation. I know from personal experience that it is extremely difficult to change a decision once it has been announced. There can be tinkering at the edges, but once the decision is made the closure or the redundancy programme invariably goes ahead. I ask the Government to intervene and do all they can to influence 90-day consultation—so that it becomes real consultation, not a talking shop.
	The 90 days of consultation is stressful enough on its own, but if there is no closure and individuals have to apply for their jobs or go through selection criteria, the pressure, worry and stress are immense, leading sometimes to mental health problems. I know that that has recently been recognised by the Government but, again, the resources need to be there to support people through that very difficult time. We must not forget that not only individuals but families are affected, so there must be support not just for the ones and twos who are in work, but for the tens and twenties in the families.
	The other issue is that when someone leaves employment, having been employed somewhere for 25 or 30 years, walking into a jobcentre, college or training establishment is extremely difficult. People need support before they get there, but often those support mechanisms are not in place. Jobcentres need to work more closely with other organisations and signpost people much better.
	A week ago, the Secretary of State and I were at a presentation by a campaign group called Need Not Greed. We listened to some of the experiences of people who were struggling through the benefits system and the unemployment system, trying to find work. Jobcentre Plus does all it can, but huge numbers of people are falling through the net. Individuals are often not informed of the welfare rights that are available to them. Again, there is a failure to join up what is out there in the marketplace.
	To follow on from what the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) said, we must look at what is in some respects the opportunity of how to come out of the recession, and part of that must involve social enterprise. We have scratched the surface in encouraging social enterprise in entrepreneurship—co-operative systems of house building, council house building, investment in new homes and creating enterprise zones, which we did some 20 years ago. We need to go back to that consideration. Renewable energy systems are also a huge opportunity for people to train in new skills and introduce those systems to our communities.
	Over the past couple of weeks, we have spoken a lot about bank lending. In my constituency, a number of businesses have asked for overdraft facilities, while some had overdraft facilities in the past. Now the banks are refusing to do that. I ask the Government to ensure that what is best fit for businesses is delivered. If it is loans, so be it, but we must look at other opportunities and options.
	I urge the Government to use the debates on the Welfare Reform Bill, which we will be considering over the next couple of weeks, to listen to the concerns of the individuals involved. As I said, the Secretary of State heard at first hand some of the problems that those people are experiencing. We should learn from those, and listen to the trade unions and the representative groups that bring those problems to the attention of the Secretary of State. Let us not make the Bill something that damages employment; it must create it.

James Clappison: This has been a good debate with thoughtful contributions that remind us how, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), unemployment is a searing experience for so many of our constituents, many of whom are experiencing it for the first time, or for the first time in a long time. We are entirely right to bring the subject to the Floor of the House today, as we did in October. We are also right to set out our plans for how we would help people in that terrible situation. We have done so in the motion and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) did so in her speech.
	We have heard good speeches throughout the debate. We heard a thoughtful contribution from the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), who looked to the future, and a brief one from the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who spoke about his constituency. I hope he will not mind my describing his speech as something of a late entrance in this context. That was it, however: that was the sum total of the contributions from the Labour Benches, which have been empty for large parts of the evening. In contrast— [Interruption.] Labour Members are trying to make up for it with the noise that they are making now, but very few of them were present earlier. We will not be drowned out.
	We heard excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), for North-East Hertfordshire, for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone). Other Conservative Members had also hoped to contribute. Those who spoke gave specific examples of the way in which unemployment was affecting their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West described specific cases in which his constituents had tried to obtain help—real people who had not received real help from the Government so far. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough told us what it is like to have to deal with unemployment personally, and described the experiences of employers in his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford highlighted the failure to provide people with the skills that they needed.
	We also heard speeches from the hon. Members for Glasgow, East (John Mason), for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) and for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies). I hope that they and others will not mind if, in the short time available to me, I do not refer to the detail of their speeches.
	In contrast to the way in which my hon. Friends have considered the present-day problems of unemployment, how those problems are affecting their constituents, how we can emerge from them and how we can best plan for the future, Labour Members have shown a tendency to look back to the past. That was no more evident than in the speech of the Secretary of State, who seemed much more comfortable when talking of the distant past than when discussing what is happening in the country today.

James Clappison: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, because he has not been present throughout the debate.
	The final line of the Government amendment states, somewhat unbelievably, that the House
	"further believes that the Government should increase the support offered to people trapped on benefits by previous recessions."
	So now we know: unemployment is all our fault. We have been occupying the Opposition Benches for the past 12 years, but little did we know that the present terrible economic impasse was our fault. Hang on a minute, though: let me bring Labour Members a little more up to date. Was it not this same Government who promised, in their 1997 manifesto,
	"We will introduce a budget within two months after the election to begin the task of equipping the British economy and reforming the welfare state to get young people and the long term unemployed back to work"?

James Clappison: So the hon. Gentleman says, but one of Labour's key pledges was:
	"We will get 250,000 young unemployed off benefit and into work".
	Today, as my hon. Friends have reminded the House, there are 140,000 more 16 to 24-year-olds unemployed than there were in 1997. That is the scale of the Government's failure. What is worse, however, is that it is not entirely connected with the present recession. The number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds started to rise long before this recession took hold. In their expert analyses, my hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale, West and for North-East Hertfordshire demonstrated that the Government's claims were a statistical fiddle, while throughout that time they were failing to provide the personalised help that people needed.
	Yesterday—my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) mentioned this—the Government told me in a written parliamentary answer that there were approximately 200,000 more young people aged to 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training than there were in 2000, when the recording of the so-called NEETs began.  [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, from a sedentary position, "What about the 2 million?" I think that he would do better to spend his time thinking about the problems that people face today. He was happy talking about the claimant count in 1986; why will he not talk about the claimant count today, and about what should be done to bring it down? He must face the fact—he must admit—that his policies have not been the success that the Government wished.
	As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) wrote in  The Daily Telegraph last week—and he is in a position to know, if anyone is—the new deal has
	"not been the success that ministers claim."
	Little wonder that the Government have chosen radically to alter, if not abolish, the mandatory new deal, and to put the flexible new deal in its place. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire pointed out, we want help to be provided for people, and we believe that our proposals would be far more effective in getting help to the unemployed. In the meantime, however, we need to ensure that whatever help is offered by the Government is put in place, and we need to hear a much clearer definition—a much clearer spelling out—of what will happen to the flexible new deal. Will the Government guarantee that it will be in place by 1 October this year? Thousands of unemployed people, including young unemployed people, want to know the answer to that question.
	Far too often, instead of providing the help that is needed, Ministers have presented a picture of what is happening that is very far from the experience of the thousands of our constituents who are obliged to visit jobcentres. In October, when we last debated this subject, the Secretary of State said that whatever problems we brought to light, we could not
	"detract from the fact that there are 600,000 vacancies in the economy".—[ Official Report, 7 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 205.]
	I will be corrected if I am wrong, but I think that there was an interesting silence from the Secretary of State today on the subject of the number of vacancies in the economy. What was the reason for that eloquent silence? Could it be connected to the fact that since the Secretary of State gave that figure in October, the number of vacancies has fallen in every month? In January, to which the most recent figures relate, the number of vacancies was barely 500,000. As for the number of vacancies advertised in jobcentres, the situation is bleaker still: the number has fallen from 383,000 at the time when the Secretary of State made his comment to 271,000, the most recent figure.

James Clappison: Yes. The Government have broken another promise. They said that they would ensure that the vacancies were advertised in the jobcentres, but they failed. I think that the Secretary of State would do better to keep quiet rather than intervening from a sedentary position. What he fails to face up to is the reality encountered by so many of our constituents: that in jobcentres up and down the country there are many times more jobseekers than there are vacancies for them to fill.
	I do visit such jobcentres. In Dartford, for instance, there are five jobseekers for every vacancy. In Harlow and Selby there are 12, as there are in Pendle. If the Secretary of State chose to visit his local jobcentre in Stalybridge and Hyde, he would find that there were 18 jobseekers for every vacancy in his constituency. He needs to reflect on that a little more, rather than talking about the past.
	I can, however, offer the Secretary of State this consolation. He is good at finding consolation; it is one of his specialities. He may need to look for more consolation in the future. I recently visited a welfare-to-work provider in Hull. Apparently, in one of the Hull parliamentary constituencies there are 4,363 jobseekers and 74 vacancies. That means that there are approximately 60 jobseekers per vacancy. That is what this Government have done for the good people of Hull.
	This is a Government who are failing to meet the challenge of the recession and unemployment. Everything that we have heard from them today suggests that here is a party that has lost its way. Its Back Benchers lack interest in the severe problems affecting many of their constituents, as can be seen from the pitiful turnout today, while its Ministers have run out of the energy and enthusiasm that are needed to tackle the problem. There is also a lack of policies. This is a Government who are failing to introduce timely policies to bring real help to people when they need it, and a Government without the vision to tackle the problems for the long term.
	We need fresh thinking. We realise what a terrible experience so many of our constituents are undergoing, and we realise that this Government cannot provide that fresh thinking. In the meantime, we will do what we can to chivvy them along to provide some help, but the people of this country need far better help than they have been receiving. We have set out our plans for the future. We want to give the people affected by the recession hope for the future. This country needs fresh thinking, and it will fall to this side of the House to provide it.

Tony McNulty: I am afraid that, for all the passion and for all the absence of substance in the speech of the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), if a speech does not include as firm as possible a commitment to the £2 billion extra that we are already spending, it is all hot air. It is all vacuity on stilts, counting for absolutely nothing.
	Apart from the contribution from the Opposition Front Bench, however, we have heard some fine speeches. I pray in aid the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone). If he wishes to discuss with me some of the serious points that he made about redundancy payments and other issues, I shall be more than happy to examine them in detail. He reminded the House, as did the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), that these are serious matters which should be dealt with seriously.
	In formulating policy, neither a Government nor an Opposition should treat the British public as idiots, but I am afraid that, without the money, that is what is happening. If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) is seriously suggesting that all that has been done—in driving efficiencies through, the creation of Jobcentre Plus and the mammoth task of merging the benefits service with the employment service—is somehow, in some quasi-Trot fashion, all about cuts, she needs to learn a serious lesson. If she is trying to equate the £1.83 billion in efficiency savings made by that entire process with the £2 billion extra money, with extra jobs, targeted appropriately through Jobcentre Plus to give people real help now, she is on a different planet. We welcome—it cannot come soon enough—the ennoblement of David Freud in the other place to add weight to what is palpably such a thin team to deal with such a serious matter.  [Interruption.] No, there is no fear of me being thin; I totally accept that.
	The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who is not in his place at present, made some serious points, but equally serious was the remark from our side that, happily, until very recently Oxfordshire probably has not required such a thing as job clubs. That should be a matter of rejoicing, rather than being seen as a matter of policy absence. If the hon. Gentleman were present—as he is a very honourable gentleman, I am sure that he has his reasons for not being here—I would tell him that I would welcome talking to him further about jobcentres. The job club process has existed for some time in other jobcentres; across the entire network, it never went away. However, I commend what the hon. Gentleman has done in the current circumstances for his constituents and others in the area.
	I also commend the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies) on his speech, although I do not agree with everything he said. He delivered a focused speech that, again, brought us back to the humanity behind the figures, and the potential destruction of communities if we do not address these matters. He took the issue very seriously, and I will relay to appropriate colleagues in Government some of the broader points that he made about administration and the 90-day notice of redundancy, because, for all that we can do with the rapid response service at present, we say time and again to employers, "Let us in at the earliest opportunity." That can only thus far be a request, and we will have to look at whether we can put a bit more substance around that—although, as ever with legislation, that will take longer than we might want.
	However, I would not traduce—as some colleagues do in their enthusiasm—the rapid response service. Where it has worked effectively, it has worked very well. Some 800 employers have been involved at various times—that does vary. At some stages, it is about getting people to manage the process of unemployment, because of the current state of the labour market. At its best though, such as for Woolworths employees, people's feet have not touched the ground. In the case of the Trafford centre in Manchester, because the rapid response service was there, employees went straight from Woolworths into other retail jobs, and did not even get to the unemployed stage. I accept that there is a huge range along this continuum, and we have never said any of these components are the one magic wand that will solve everything.
	We do not resile from the fact that every job lost is a tragedy, and that the cumulative loss of jobs can cause real problems for communities, but I reject the vacuous notion that somehow the UK dragged poor old Scotland into the recession, as though there it was, sitting happily in the arc of affluence—I think that was the phrase—and, together with Iceland, it could have struggled along regardless of the global recession. Nor do I accept the suggestions of the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) about capital expenditure. Given what the Scottish nationalist Government are doing with private finance initiatives and capital expenditure, and what they are not doing in terms of skills and apprenticeships—I have spoken to Ministers up there—they have no leg to stand on in even making a contribution on the economy or unemployment in this country, and they should be sidelined for the micro-little party they are, and will be again back in Scotland.
	I take very seriously the points of the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson)—who is not present, and must have very good reasons for not being so. They made serious contributions, touching not only on our response to the current downturn, but on what should follow. Between them, they made some very astute points about matters such as the low-carbon economy, green jobs, and taking some time as we work through the unemployment that is currently with us to lay the groundwork for what the economy will look like afterwards. That is a difficult trick to pull off, but it is one that a Government of any political persuasion should be trying to perform.
	I accept the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about the £2 billion, because that is essential to keep Jobcentre Plus going and working effectively. I also take his point—not least because we recently announced the Houghton report—about the role of local government of all political persuasions in working with its local communities to do everything possible for local labour markets.
	A point was made about the six-month offer that will come in from April. That will be for everybody at six months, and in this instance it is right and proper to say what we will do in January, to get on then with the designing work, and to make sure it is available for people by the end of this month. That is the way it should be.
	When the predecessor of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead announced a similar scheme last November, it was utterly for the birds for the following reasons: there was no funding at all; it was as if it had been written on the back of the proverbial envelope, which is the politically correct way of saying the back of a fag packet; and crucially, her colleagues had made utterly wrong assumptions about the cost of people being unemployed for 12 months, forgetting that, even now in the depths of this downturn, Jobcentre Plus do help people back into work—60 per cent. within three months, and 75 per cent. within six months. What they came up with was not costed; therefore, it was not worth the paper it was written on.
	People must be offered substantial help, support and promise, rather than suggestions, all of which are fatuous if there is no money behind them. Because of its deception, that is a cruel way to conduct politics, especially given the serious nature of these issues.  [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady chunters away from a sedentary position. She was asked time and again, notwithstanding the fact that she has two shadow Chancellors, to stand up to both of them and agree that the £2 billion can, and should, be spent now as a real help for people throughout Jobcentre Plus. Answer came there none—absolutely none. I still offer her the chance to do that, but she is still not forthcoming.
	I do not want to dwell on the past, and I do not think the Secretary of State dwelt on it. This is all about the future, save for one point: we must learn from the past. We have learned from the good and bad elements of all aspects of the new deal over the past 10 years, and those lessons are informing the flexible new deal. We also can, and should, learn from previous recessions, and we will not face the people of this country without learning those lessons and ensuring we do not dump people sideways on to benefits just for the sake of it and leave them alone. We also do not—whoever said it earlier was wrong—cook the books and change the statistics 19 times for our own purpose, as we would far rather work with the numbers as they are. Also, it cannot be in anybody's interest—I start from the position that every Member of the House agrees with this—that we leave anybody to one side and do not help them. Therefore, we push on with welfare reform despite the downturn, and we offer everybody as much help as we can.
	The one lesson from our recent history, regardless of the party politics involved in previous recessions, is that now, more than ever, we cannot stand idly by while anybody suffers from this recession. All of us must make sure that the UK gets out of this in as strong a position as possible—the country will not forgive this Chamber if that is not what prevails.
	 Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House proceeded to a Division.

Andrew Lansley: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has neglected to read the motion that I have just moved, which
	"further notes that the loss of the opt-out and the distinction between active and inactive on-call time would also be deeply damaging to British business and other public services such as those provided by retained fire-fighters".
	We did raise that matter, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to make a point later about retained fire fighters I am sure that my colleagues would welcome it.

Andrew Lansley: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. We will have to find out why the Government have pursued a line that does not appear to be supported by their MEPs. Perhaps the Liberal Democrat spokesman will tell us why that party appears to be pursuing a line not supported by theirs, but I am happy to say that at least Conservative Members have taken a view on these issues that is supported by our MEPs.
	If I may, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall focus on the issues as they affect the NHS. Later, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) will have an opportunity to talk about some of the wider issues raised by the European working time directive. However, the health service issues illustrate the impact that inappropriate and unthinking legislation can have on the delivery of public services and, by extension, private sector services and production.
	I shall begin with some of the background to a problem that Opposition Members have found very frustrating. As far back as 1991, the excessive hours being worked by junior doctors were clearly unacceptable. The problem needed to be tackled, and that is why the new deal for junior doctors was introduced in that year. Its objective was to bring us to the point where junior doctors worked a maximum of 56 hours a week, and we reached that position three years ago. That measure was introduced domestically by the UK Government for UK purposes. When the working time directive was introduced in 1993, it was recognised that there was a need for exemptions, and doctors in training were exempted.
	When the directive was extended in 2000, it was recognised that there needed to be a substantial transition period. The 2003 regulations implementing the changes to the directive in this country specified a maximum working week of 58 hours from 1 August 2004, 56 hours from 1 August 2007, and 48 hours from 1 August 2009. I am sure that it will be part of the Secretary of State's argument that the NHS has had notice since 2003 of what will be required by the law in 2009.

Andrew Lansley: Yes, I agree with that, and I will come on to some possible solutions, although I fear—I know that some of my colleagues would say this—that the directive imposes a legislative straitjacket that limits our potential, even given the common position taken by the Council of Ministers.
	Let me be clear about what the problems are for the NHS. First, the Government are proceeding on the basis that there is a much higher level of compliance than there really is. Ministers are working on the basis of compliance with the new deal for junior doctors, not with the working time directive directly. When the Royal College of Surgeons went to the north-west region, which the Government had said was already 97 per cent. compliant with the obligations for this August, it found that one third of those units in the north-west were not compliant, and about a third of those who were not compliant thought that they still would not be compliant by August.
	Are the data that we see reliable? The Association of Surgeons in Training, which surveyed its surgical trainees, found that only a quarter of them had contracts and human resources department data that were an accurate reflection of the real hours that they were working, so we may not be getting proper data. Worryingly, 55 per cent. of members of the Association of Surgeons in Training went on to say that they were pressured falsely to declare their actual hours worked, and 80 per cent. of surgical trainees supported an opt-out from the European working time directive to protect their training.
	The second problem is that a reduction in trainees' hours reduces the time available for training. We knew that that was happening—Modernising Medical Careers and the new deal did that—but what is proposed goes even further. It means that doctors are moving to shift working, instead of operating as a firm and taking collective responsibility. Most of us, in so far as we know about the way in which junior doctor training works—many of us do—have always thought in terms of a consultant and his or her "firm", but that will have to go if all the changes are made, because junior doctors simply will not be able to be there for enough time, and will not get enough contact with their consultant, to make that happen.
	Junior doctors will lose continuity of learning. They will not be able to admit a patient, see them through their course of treatment and see what happens to them when they leave to the same extent as they once did. Continuity in relation to patients is a very important aspect of learning. The cumulative experience of trainees in the course of their medical education is absolutely vital. We know that the reduction from 10,000 hours of contact and direct experience of the treatment of patients to 7,000 hours will have a significant impact. As Professor Janet Grant from the Open university said, the difference between competent and expert is 10,000 accumulated hours of experience. Do we want specialists who have the ticks in the boxes when it comes to their training qualifications, but who do not have sufficient practical, supervised experience in the kind of procedures with which they will be involved? I do not and patients do not, and the Secretary of State has a letter from the lay group advising the Royal College of Surgeons on the matter. The medical profession do not want that. The surgeons in training do not want it. So why does the directive and why will the Department prejudice the safety of patients for no initial gain for doctors?

Andrew Lansley: That is exactly right. What are we gaining in health and safety terms for junior doctors by prejudicing in this way their capacity to undertake the necessary training in order for them to become not only qualified specialists, but excellent in the services that they provide?
	Some of the studies have made it clear that the change does not make much difference. For instance, a study in the  Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine last year reported:
	"Our results challenge the assumption that each hour of work above 40 hours steadily increases health and safety risks and reduces productivity. In fact, no adverse effects were found until the 60-hour per week mark".
	Another study published by the University of Maryland said:
	"Studies show that the risk of an incident associated with long work hours may be influenced more by the precise work schedule, including the length and timing of the duty periods, and the provision of breaks, than by compliance or lack of compliance with the arbitrary benchmark of 48 working hours."
	Many junior doctors say that the shift system often leads to negative impacts on their sense of well-being and their work-life balance, and one of the surveys by the Royal College of Physicians showed exactly that—a negative effect on their work-life balance.

Andrew Lansley: No, I am concluding, if my hon. Friend will forgive me.
	Interestingly, the Government's amendment signals some movement. It states that the Government recognise
	"that a solution is required in order to bring back much needed flexibility to the treatment of on-call time and compensatory rest time".
	The problem is that they have not achieved that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) will make clear in his winding-up speech, if we achieve that flexibility, the retention of the opt-out and the ability to amend the directive, we will be able to support greater labour market flexibility and competitiveness generally. The burden of compliance with the working time directive has been enormous, but the benefit has been far too limited by comparison.
	We have had years of promises from Ministers, but they have failed. It is time for action by the Government and for clarity about the long-term future of the working time directive. The Government are always claiming influence in Europe. It turns out that they cannot even influence their own Members of the European Parliament. The time has come for MEPs who will promote British interests, and the elections in June will take care of that. The time has also come for a Government who have impact in securing our interests in Europe. That will come at the next general election, through a change of Government.

Alan Johnson: This is the position. The retained firefighters need the opt-out. We have protected the opt-out since 1998, and against the most vehement criticism from other member states. The reason why SiMAP and Jaeger could not be sorted out—and this is a negotiation, of course—is that some member states put the solution of those judgments together with the opt-out. They then said to the UK and other member states, "You can get a solution to SiMAP and Jaeger only if you give up your opt-outs."
	We have got to a common position that we all support and which would resolve SiMAP and Jaeger and maintain the opt-out; what the Conservative party now asks us to do is to go back and say, "We want the opt-out, SiMAP and Jaeger, and a sectoral opt-out"—incidentally, the European working time directive does not allow for that, but I will come to that in a second—"for all junior doctors who are involved in surgery." What a brilliant negotiating stance. It is a "Janet and John" way of negotiating an agreement. That is the difference between the Conservative and Labour parties. The Conservatives never had any intention of reaching agreements on issues such as protecting workers' rights—all they saw was "European"; they did not go on to see "working time directive".

Alan Johnson: Not only am I aware of that research, but I intend to quote it chapter and verse later.
	In acute disciplines, a working week of over 100 hours was the norm, with most of that time spent directly caring for and even operating on patients, with often the most critically ill patients being initially seen by the least trained staff. That is why it is even more important that there are sensible limits to the number of hours staff work to break that culture once and for all and ensure that no medical professional is required or expected to work dangerously long hours again. For this reason and many others, the British Medical Association is supporting the full implementation of the directive for all junior doctors.
	There is no question but that it has been challenging to work towards full compliance. The NHS has over 46,000 doctors in training at any one time. Incidentally, there is no vacancy problem, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) suggested. On the last set of figures, we had a 95 per cent. fill rate; there is absolutely no vacancy problem anywhere in the country that I know of. This is a service that by its very nature has to operate for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Trainee doctors need to train and work in as many medical disciplines as possible to become good doctors. Hospitals have had to make dramatic changes to how staff work. So, yes, it has been difficult, but it is simply not true to say that the NHS is ill prepared to achieve full compliance by August this year. We have provided substantial financial support to the NHS to help it to meet the requirements of the directive—£110 million in the current financial year, rising to £310 million for the year to come.
	We are working closely with the royal colleges, including the Royal College of Surgeons, and with the BMA and all strategic health authorities, to ensure that we have as accurate a picture as possible of how well prepared trusts are for full implementation. At present, two thirds of junior doctors are working no more than 48 hours per week, and many trusts, including almost all those in the north-west, are already fully compliant with the directive. In December, we agreed a quality assurance process with the SHAs and the royal colleges to examine potential difficulties and ensure that there are action plans to secure full compliance. The first quality assurance return was received at the end of January, the next is due towards the end of this month, and they will then be received monthly until August. The content is routinely shared with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the National Reference Group, on which the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Physicians, the BMA and the SHAs are all represented. There is a rigorous process to ensure that this is being implemented successfully.
	There are, of course, still some areas that are struggling: in specialisms such as surgery and 24-hour immediate patient care; or in more isolated, rural parts of the country where there is a shortage of trainee doctors. We have therefore notified the European Commission of our intention to derogate for these areas. It needs to be made clear that the derogation does not mean opting out of the directive: it will mean a maximum working week, for certain disciplines, of 52 hours; and within three years, full compliance with the directive must be achieved.

Norman Lamb: The Secretary of State said that the individual opt-out could not be used for junior doctors, as has been proposed by Remedy UK. What did he mean by that? It seems to me that as long as the individual opt-out applies, it is as applicable to the health service as it is to anywhere else.

Andrew Lansley: Will the Secretary of State consider the proposal—it came from Remedy but moves in the direction that the RCS is looking for—to have, in effect, a collective agreement to allow junior doctors individually to opt for a 56-hour working week?

Alan Johnson: No, I am not giving way. In some parts of the country where the directive has already been implemented, teams of trainee surgeons work on a shift system with senior trainees on call to deal with surgical emergencies. Others have split elective and surgical work so trainees get to experience both.
	My third and final reason for rejecting the call by the Royal College of Surgeons is that I completely reject the claim that a reduction in the working week of trainee surgeons will jeopardise the safety of patients. Those who make this argument—including the Opposition in their motion—claim that to have shorter working hours reduces cover in hospitals. But hospitals are addressing that by organising trainee teams and rotas differently, and it is beyond doubt that doctors who are required to work long hours are more likely to make mistakes that could threaten the lives of patients. As long ago as 1998, my noble Friend the eminent surgeon, Lord Darzi, published a paper in  The Lancet on the effect of sleep deprivation on surgical trainees, which showed that being deprived of sleep for 24 hours had the same impact on surgeons' performance as a blood alcohol level higher than the legal limit for driving.
	Most recently, a study by Warwick university medical school—referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate)—on trainees working in Coventry and Warwickshire university hospitals compared the number of errors made by junior doctors working no more than 48 hours with those working no more than 56 hours, and it showed that those working fewer hours made 30 per cent. fewer clinical errors. In the US, where junior doctors work around 80 hours a week, 50 per cent. admit that they have made errors because of fatigue. That reflects the study published in the  British Medical Journal in 2001, which showed that surgical trainees were much more likely to make mistakes during the daytime after being on call at night. To complete the process, a study by the Harvard work hours, health and safety group published in  The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety shows that junior doctors who have worked traditional shifts of more than 24 hours have a greatly increased risk of crashing their car driving home from work, as well as of making a serious, even fatal, medical error.
	Over the past ten years, the NHS has put considerable effort into preparing for full implementation of the European working time directive. It is worth pointing out—this would have been my fourth reason if I had thought of it earlier—that longer hours particularly disadvantage women. Some 60 per cent. of medical students are women. All the professional bodies agreed with the objective when this agreement was signed in 1999-2000. I have no idea why the Conservative party wants to be the champion of long hours and staff exploitation. I hope that the House leaves its arguments where they belong: in the last century. I commend the amendment to the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, I should say that hypocrisy is not a word we like to bandy about in the Chamber.

Norman Lamb: I do not support the case made by the Royal College of Surgeons for working 65 hours. Throughout my speech I have argued that the Government should listen to its concerns about the impact on the service if the limit were reduced to 48 hours. That is the important point. One can then have a discussion with it about how best to resolve the matter. It does not mean that one has to accept its proposition as the only solution to the problem.
	Let me consider the scale of the potential impact, which is frightening. Approximately 30,000 junior doctors in training will be hit by the 1 August change. That means 30,000 working days lost per week from the NHS through the reduction from 56 to 48 hours a week. If we take an average trust with 200 junior doctors, that means 200 working days or 1,600 hours of medical cover or 28 whole doctor equivalents lost in an average week. Losing 28 doctors out of 200—14 per cent. of junior medical staff—could have a massive impact on the NHS and the care that it provides. The effect is made more acute by the SiMAP and Jaeger judgments, which deal with on-call time.
	What will the result be? All those in the profession who have considered the matter express genuine concern about the impact on patient care and continuity of care. They talk of the danger of multiple handovers. Contrary to what the Secretary of State said, clear evidence shows that loss of continuity of care is a key cause of avoidable medical errors. That is why the royal colleges' concerns should be taken more seriously.
	Hospital trusts that have managed to comply with the 48-hour ruling have often done so through using locums, often from outside the hospital. That causes concern because, as the Royal College of Physicians highlighted, now that the Government have acted to reduce massively the number of international medical graduates who work in the health service, it is hard to find enough locums. The survey that the Royal College of Physicians conducted raises concerns about the quality of locums who are brought in to complete shift patterns because of the reduction in working hours. It identified lower quality and reliability. All that is apart from the cost of bringing in locums, which Remedy suggests could be as much as £120,000 in one hospital.
	There is also the problem of the thinness of the available cover if any problems arise, such as sickness or holiday absence. The Royal College of Surgeons has highlighted the risk of running out of surgeons in some parts of the country to fill gaps in the rotas. The Government should take those anxieties seriously.
	We must also consider the impact on training. Almost 50 per cent. of junior doctors in the first two years of surgical training go into theatre less than three times a week. One in 15 do not go into theatre at all. If those junior doctors' hours are reduced, their experience in theatre will be further reduced. They may pass their exams and have the tick-box competencies required to qualify, but that does not mean that we produce the best and most experienced surgeons. The royal colleges are concerned about that.
	There is a danger that patient care will suffer if training suffers. We are considering a health and safety measure, yet the impact on patient safety could be negative. That is why not only the royal colleges but doctors, including junior doctors, who would supposedly benefit from the measure, oppose the 1 August changes. A majority of the doctors who are supposed to benefit do not want the imposition of that 48-hour limit. They are concerned about the resulting loss of opportunities.
	There is also a serious concern about the impact on the viability of small and medium-sized district general hospitals. The president of the Royal College of Surgeons has expressed that anxiety directly to me. If we reach a point where it becomes unsafe to keep a small district general hospital open because there is insufficient cover, the Government will be responsible if they have not managed to resolve the problems. Rural areas will be most affected; the massive hospitals in our cities will be less affected. The viability of small hospitals faces a genuine challenge as a result of the changes.
	Can the changes be achieved? The evidence from the surveys and the royal colleges suggests that they cannot. The Secretary of State said that the north-west was already largely compliant, but the surveys suggest that, if one examines the detail, hours are substantially under-reported and many of the hospitals that are supposedly complaint are not, in practice.
	What are the solutions? The Royal College of Surgeons suggests the possibility of a sectoral opt-out, to permit surgeons to work to a maximum of 65 hours. There is general opposition to that. We have heard that the Government are putting money into facilitating hospitals in coping with the change, yet there is also concern that the money is not getting through to hospitals to help them effect that change. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm in his closing remarks whether the money that the Government have made available is getting through to the hospitals where it is needed.
	The Government rely on the power of derogation, which in effect means that we can delay the inevitable for two years, reducing working hours in the interim period from 56 to 52 hours, before coming down to 48 hours in two years. However, the process is cumbersome and bureaucratic. The Department of Health has applied for a derogation, but we understand that individual hospitals will have to apply to the Department for the right to take advantage of that derogation if it is granted. We will have to wait until May before we know whether the derogation will be granted, which makes it impossible for hospitals to plan their rotas into the future. They will not know until May whether the European Union will grant the derogation. Derogation is therefore a blunt instrument and will simply delay the inevitable, without addressing concerns about the loss of continuity of care and the impact on training. Patient care will be permanently comprised.
	The Government maintain that we should retain the individual opt-out and we support them on that. However, the individual opt-out is generally regarded as not an option for resolving the problem that we are discussing, because if the general rotas go down to 48 hours, how, in an organisational way, is it possible to provide for junior doctors working up to 56 hours? The process becomes a bureaucratic nightmare, and everyone ends up having to comply with the 48 hours.
	As the Conservative spokesman mentioned, a company—it is called RotaGeek—has developed software that facilitates a discussion between management and individual junior doctors to organise their shift patterns and add extra slots, so that they can go up to 56 hours. That seems to be an eminently sensible way of getting the Government out of a hole and facilitating longer working hours for those junior doctors who collaboratively choose to participate in a 56-hour rota. However, when RotaGeek went to the Department and said, "We want to work with you and pilot this in a hospital to see how it will work," it was turned away. The Department was not interested in that sort of collaborative working.

Kevin Barron: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Eight minutes is only just over half the time that was displayed on the Annunciator earlier today. I have prepared my speech during the past three hours, but I am not sure whether I would have come in to the debate on the basis of being able to speak for eight minutes, rather than 15. However, I shall move on.
	I support the Government's position in many areas of this debate, especially in relation to the working time directive and the health and safety benefits that it brings to workers not only in this country but in other European countries. It is primarily about health and safety. Indeed, this country's health and safety statistics show that we do rather well—even with the opt-out. The EU has the lowest rate of work-related fatal injuries, and the third lowest rate of non-fatal injuries. The UK also has the lowest proportion of those in employment reporting that their work affects their health or that it causes them to suffer from stress.
	I am pleased that the Government are committed to helping people to achieve more choice over how they work. I support the work-life balance campaign, for example. Of course, that includes the choice to work more hours as well as fewer. Many millions of people work far fewer hours than they did 15 or 20 years ago, which is a good thing, but I also believe that the individual opt-out is important.
	I received an e-mail from a constituent of mine on 6 March, although it was unrelated to this debate. Mr. Bunting, who lives in the village of Whiston, said:
	"Should our government agree to adopt this decision"—
	the decision of the European Parliament—
	"this will mean that I will no longer be able to choose to work over an average of 48 hours per week should I wish to do so."
	He lives in South Yorkshire, but I have just checked the name of the company that he works for, and it is in Tipton in Staffordshire. The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place, and people travel a long way for their work. He might not be in Tipton every day—he is a sales engineer—but it is likely that the kind of flexibility offered to him on a personal basis is what keeps him in the job that he wants and that, presumably, keeps his family well.
	It is beyond doubt that doctors who are required to work long hours are more likely to make mistakes, which could threaten the lives of patients. We need to bear that in mind in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) and the Secretary of State mentioned the recent studies by Warwick university and Harvard, which compared the number of errors made by doctors working no more than 48 hours with those made by doctors working no more than 56 hours, and showed that those working fewer hours made 30 per cent. fewer clinical errors. If you or I were party to a clinical error, that would be an important factor. We need to look carefully at the comparisons, particularly those involving surgery. A wealth of research makes it clear that long hours worked by doctors are bad for patient health.
	Since 1998, when the directive was introduced, the NHS has made good progress. In 1998, the 48-hour maximum working week was introduced for the vast majority of staff, including consultants and nurses, although they of course retained their right to opt out if that was their individual choice. It is only for junior doctors that we have yet to implement the directive fully, but if we look at the NHS health care work force website, we can see that we have come a long way towards achieving that.
	In August 2004, the maximum working week for junior doctors was reduced to 58 hours, in 2007 it was reduced to 56 hours, and it will come down to 48 hours in August this year for the vast majority of junior doctors—no matter what happens over the argument about whether to opt out. We have to take that into account. We are talking about specialist areas that may or may not be affected by the reduction in hours, and we should keep that very much in mind.
	As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the NHS is not ill prepared to achieve virtual compliance by August this year. At present, some two thirds of junior doctors are working no more than 48 hours a week and many trusts are already fully compliant with the directive. The Government have supported the trusts in doing that. There was an argument against it from the British Medical Association—rightly so, as it is a trade union looking after its members—in December last year, questioning whether the money was getting to the front line. That is a very relevant question and if I were in the BMA's position, I would have asked it as well. I have not seen any evidence, nor have we been sent any evidence for this debate, to suggest that money has not gone to the front line to help to reduce the hours of people who currently cannot meet the 48-hour target.
	As far as the negotiations in Europe about getting a further derogation are concerned—they start this month, I believe—I hope that they go well. Our negotiators should tell the Commission, and the Parliament, that when 15 member states are arguing for some form of opt-out, that should send a message that the Commission has got this wrong—and I think that in some areas, they have. But I would not go for a massive opt-out; in some sectors, such as long-distance lorry driving, it would be quite dangerous not to reduce the hours over time.
	The Health Committee is currently carrying out an inquiry into patient safety. We took evidence on the issue from the Royal College of Physicians. I see that I have little time left, but I want to mention one important point. I received a copy of the survey by the Royal College of Physicians the other day, and we asked Sir John Black to give evidence to us. We are talking about a response rate of 32 per cent.; this is the Royal College of Surgeons contacting its fellows, so these are not independent surveys. I have to say that it is the same for the Royal College of Physicians. I should add that I am now an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; I was made a fellow last year, along with the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), and I believe we are the only two in the House now. The RCP was also contacting its lead people inside each individual trust.
	As I say, this is not necessarily the type of survey on which we in the House, whether we be in government or in opposition, should be taking decisions. It is not sufficiently independent. We see this in the media all the time. I am not saying that some of the issues raised may not be genuine. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State dismissed the issue that training may be affected—but it is about the logistics of training. We also saw this in our ISTC—independent sector treatment centre—inquiry of a few years ago; training is very important. If people are not there to train, we could end up not getting the type of skilled surgeons that we need. That said, I would desist from using these types of survey to suggest that this is what is out there in the real world. This is what is out there in the surgeons' world, but things may be very different in other parts of the national health service—sometimes even within the same operating theatres.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in this important debate on the European working time directive.
	As has been made perfectly clear in a number of contributions, losing our opt-out from the working time directive presents a number of serious problems for the country. As the motion states, the Business Secretary is right to say that we should stand firm in support of the opt-out. It is just a pity that the Government's leadership has lost control of its MEPs who have forced us into the position where we have to debate the issue today. I ask the Business Secretary in all seriousness: what has happened to the deal brokered in June that we keep our opt-out by accepting the temporary agency workers directive? What on earth has happened to that deal?
	There are some 96 fire stations in this country that are staffed by full-time firefighters, and retained firefighters are a vital part of our nation's fire protection. Indeed, as I witnessed during the summer floods of 2007, the work of firefighters in providing emergency relief to those so badly affected was vital. They are going to face great difficulties if this opt-out is abolished.
	The British people have complained for many years about the nanny state. Now we are seeing the damage caused by the super-nanny state emerging from Europe. I sincerely ask the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs what the point is of the EU's Small Business Act, which is intended to improve the environment for Europe's small businesses, when we see this directive filtering through. A number of eminent people have criticised the possible loss of the opt-out, and the CBI deputy director general, John Cridland, has described it as replacing "opportunity with obstruction". The cost to the UK economy is judged to be between £47 billion and £66 billion by 2020—a terrific sum. A former director general of the CBI—Lord Jones of Birmingham, no less, who is a former Labour Minister—noted in 2006:
	"The choice is simple: flexibility or stagnation. Faced with the meteoric rise of China and India, Europe has to decide between a responsive and flexible labour market or an oversupplied and restrictive one."
	That is the kernel of the argument.
	A chief executive from a senior FTSE 100 company told me recently that the EU will lose 20 per cent. of its share of world trade in the next 10 years if it continues down the regulatory path that it is on. When we face a record and huge balance of payments deficit, it seems crazy to heap more regulation on more regulation. An agreement to lose our opt out would be an acceptance of that decline. What will that do to the standard of living of our people?
	Unfortunately, unemployment in the UK stands at 1.97 million, with the claimant count in January 2009 up 438,000 on the previous year. At the time of a huge spike in unemployment, the Government and the EU are considering abolishing our opt-out. If a man or a woman loses their job, is it not their right that their partner has the opportunity to work overtime as necessary to support them and their family? For those in the manual labour sector or unskilled workers on the minimum wage, the ability to work overtime often affords a reasonable standard of living. For those who remain in employment, it must remain their right to choose how they support themselves and their families.
	What of the nation's businesses? In Britain, we have the work force and the businesses—in particular, the small and medium-sized enterprises—that will be the engine room in pulling us out of this recession. A rigidly enforced 48-hour weekly limit will damage those firms that choose to employ a core of staff whose flexibility allows them to be responsive to fluctuations in their work.
	The Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs made a really important remark in a Westminster Hall Adjournment debate on 11 February:
	"Some 3 million workers in the UK regularly work more than 48 hours a week, and we do not have a worse health and safety record than other countries."
	So, if we do not have a worse health and safety record than other countries, why on earth are we considering abolishing the opt-out? He continued, even more importantly:
	"In fact, the UK has the lowest rate of work-related fatal injuries and the third-lowest rate of non-fatal injuries, according to recent surveys of EU member states."—[ Official Report, 11 February 2009; Vol. 487, c. 432WH.]
	What on earth is the health and safety problem that we face, which demands that we abolish the opt out?
	The burden of regulation on business is already too high and through losing the opt-out our capacity to outperform our European neighbours will be weakened. Indeed, I would have thought that the EU wanted inter-state competition, rather than wanting to eliminate it. To have to consider complete reform of the structure of employment is the last thing that British businesses need right now, in the middle of the deepest recession in living memory. In this country, 98 per cent. of businesses employ fewer than 20 employees. Unless the Government manage to secure an opt-out for those businesses, they will face huge challenges in implementing the directive, and no doubt an army of Government inspectors enforcing the rules, taking up even more time. No doubt the British public will make their feelings known in the European and general elections.
	We need to ensure that the working time opt-out is applied fairly by all and that people are not coerced into signing it. A number of measures have been set down to prevent that. It is also right that we continue to consider ways in which efficiency can be improved in the workplace and address the issues of work-life balance and the long-hours culture. Ultimately, however, legislation that affects our country should be introduced to stop abuse and to protect the health and well-being of all citizens, not to tie the hands of businesses and restrict an individual's freedom of choice.
	Already, since 1997, the Government have introduced at least 18 Acts covering employment matters, along with a staggering 280 statutory instruments relating to employment law. Instead of more red tape, why are we not seeing more positive support for businesses from the Government?
	In 2004, the European Union Committee of the House of Lords recommended—this is really important, and I urge the Minister to take account of it—that
	"organisations employing fewer than 20 employees might be exempted from the requirements of the Directive so long as their employees themselves have the right to opt-in to a maximum 48 hour working week if they wish to do so."
	We know that this decision is now the subject of conciliation procedures undertaken in Europe in an attempt to broker a deal. I expect that it will go back and forth and then end up with the Commission, where I hope it will stay at least until we have a new Commission. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will at least fight for an opt-out for small businesses in Europe?
	Let me end by reminding the Minister that we are in the middle of a recession. What businesses and their workers in this country need is flexibility to enable them to survive the recession, to thrive, and to play their vital part in helping our country to recover from its present situation.

Robert Syms: First, I want to declare an interest in the Register of Members' Interests as an employer.
	Whenever we debate the working time directive people think, "Well, with a bit of common sense, we can make the 48-hour working week work." However, along comes the dear old European Court, delivering judgments on such issues as waiting times that immediately colour a lot of the detail and cause problems for the national health service and many other areas.
	I agree with much of what has been said in the debate. I particularly want to focus on the retained fire service, like my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning). Britain gets very good value for money from its fire and rescue services, particularly in rural areas. Some of the most sparsely populated areas of our country are covered by the retained fire service, which is made up of members of the local community who are compensated and who provide valuable fire cover. Some 90 per cent. of all fire cover comes from the retained fire service.
	I think that this judgment will be a problem. The chief officer of Dorset fire and rescue service is very concerned about its implications, not least because most of those in the retained service have day jobs and usually train one night a week. By the time they have finished their training, they have hit the 48-hour limit without fighting any fires. The implications are that the training of our retained fire service might come under pressure if we are to recruit people to fight fires. That is a real problem for management. If one asks most chief fire officers what their key priority is for the retained firemen, they reply that it is to get them sufficiently trained, to keep them up to speed and to ensure that they turn up and cover the required number of hours to ensure that they are qualified to fight fires, which is becoming much more technical.
	The retained fire service is therefore vital to our national interest. In a county such as Dorset, the bulk of the service is retained. The Government get very good value for money and the council tax payers of Dorset get very good value for money from the service. Unless we get a derogation from the directive, there is no way in which we shall be able to provide fire cover, save people's lives and give people security without employing substantially more firefighters at a substantially greater cost.
	I and other Dorset Members have made representations about this year's grant to Dorset fire and rescue service. The increase this year was, I think, 0.5 per cent., which puts the service under severe pressure. We might well have to have fewer full-time engines. We will be required to rely far more on the retained fire service, and the additional consequences of the 48-hour week make the task almost impossible for our excellent chief fire officer. I hope that the Government can sort this out.
	A clear message on the national health service has come from most of the Royal Colleges. We would not necessarily all agree with it, but there are real concerns about how we will manage the change. We have known about the problem for a long time, but I do not believe that there has been sufficient work force planning. I have had meetings with doctors and people who run hospitals, and the truth is that some hospitals are well up on the game and could work a 48-hour week, but a lot could not. The point made earlier in the debate about some of the smaller hospitals in rural areas is very important.
	The Secretary of State was very robust in his response today but, given their scale, I am a little disappointed that he did not address the concerns expressed by responsible organisations. Rather than going back to first principles, I hope that he will set a pathway that will allow us to have a robust debate about how we get through this very difficult decision.
	Ideally, we would want junior doctors to work shorter hours, but they must train and gain experience. That problem has come up time and again. As we have heard, the 48-hour week poses a real problem for shifts and the handover of patients, so I hope that the Minister who winds up the debate will be able to reassure us that the Government are looking into protecting our derogation when the great conciliation meeting takes place. However, August is approaching very rapidly and we need to make progress.
	I have always believed in a fairly flexible labour market. As a responsible individual, of course I believe that we must have decent health and safety provisions but, as we have heard, this is a pretty safe country in which people can work and go about their ordinary business. At a time of economic strain and stress, when a lot of resources have gone into the NHS, it is a pity that we are facing problems that may impact on the service and on patients. They may also impact on people who want to provide a service and be properly trained to do the job in future years.

Richard Taylor: I am delighted to speak in this debate, and first I want to express my amazement at what seems to be quite a lot of agreement between the parties. Everyone agrees that excess hours are impossible. When I worked as a houseman at the old Westminster hospital, I crashed my car on the way home after being on duty all one night and for several nights before that. Excess hours, as we all agree, are completely unacceptable now.
	We are also all against the exploitation of junior doctors. I am delighted to follow the hon. Members for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) and for Poole (Mr. Syms), because retained firefighters are crucial in my area. I have one full-time station and two retained stations, and we have absolutely got to keep them.
	There is also widespread agreement—certainly on the Front Benches—that the individual opt-out must be free and without any coercion. I at last understand the difference between sectoral and individual opt-outs, so that is one thing that I have gained from the debate. There is also a certain amount of agreement about applying for some derogation. The Government are limiting it to some specialties and isolated communities, but that is something that we need to work for.
	There is no agreement about hours, although everyone seems to think that 65 to 70 hours a week are too many. The Royal College of Physicians has suggested 52 hours a week as a short-term compromise, and I think that that sounds very reasonable.
	I wish to underline the importance of securing the free individual opt-out and the temporary derogation. Most people seem to think that doctors merely want to protect their own interests and avoid working too hard, but I genuinely believe that most approach the matter from the patient's point of view.
	Quality is the watchword. When people complain to me about quality, they talk about the lack of continuity and communication, both of which have been mentioned in the debate. Continuity is crucial, but shift systems are inevitable: unfortunately, continuity will be lost unless there is really good handover when shifts change. Handover implies and needs communication. I invite hon. Members to put themselves in the position of a junior hospital doctor struggling to get through the caring work. He knows he has to leave when 5 o'clock comes, and as a result the handover is squeezed out. That is a crucial factor. I mean not only communication between doctors, but communication between the doctor and the nurse and—this is the way to prevent complaints—between the doctor and the patient and relatives.
	Quite a lot has been said about training. It is worth remembering that although one can get a certain amount of training from books, lectures and seminars, certain things can be learned only by experience. From the medical point of view, a specialist has to see that their diagnosis and their treatment are right. They have to be able to follow up. If they cannot see a patient for any length of time, they will miss out on that.
	Surgeons put the surgical point of view very bluntly: unless one does enough cutting, one does not become a good surgeon. It is experience of operations that counts. In my day, when I worked as a house surgeon—we all had to do that, even though we were to be physicians—I did my appendicectomies in the middle of the night with a very good senior house officer holding my hand. People must have that sort of apprenticeship experience in their training.
	The British Medical Association has been quoted as saying that it is fully in favour of the 48 hours, but it is right that it should attach some conditions. One condition is consultant expansion. Somebody will have to do the work if there are not enough junior doctors around, and that means that there will have to be more consultants. I am tremendously glad that I am retired, because that means that consultants will have to work at night much more than they did in my day.
	I was disappointed that the Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), the Chair of the Health Committee, tended not to accept the statements from the royal colleges. I will read what the statement from the Royal College of Physicians said. I take the point that its statement is not a scientific survey, but it gives a real impression of what is happening. It says:
	"Our surveys reveal a widespread consensus that the quality of patient care has declined in those hospitals that have introduced compliant working patterns, as has the quality and quantity of postgraduate medical training provided. Both have serious implications for future clinical care."
	I will finish my remarks by hoping that the Government will get the derogation, and the free individual opt-out; indeed, I push them to do so. In the meantime, we must have a compromise until we have adequate consultant numbers, have worked out how to provide junior doctor training adequately, and can ensure adequate continuity of care. We must also ensure adequate time for communication, not only between doctors, and between doctors and nurses, but between doctors and patients and their relatives.

Sammy Wilson: May I first say that what has happened in the European Parliament, and the way in which MEPs from the Government party voted in the European Parliament, has caused great concern to those who will be affected by the European directive? My party believes that what happens on working time should be determined nationally, and not Europe wide. That point was illustrated very well by the contribution from the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who pointed out that there are particular circumstances affecting the United Kingdom, namely those pertaining to retained firefighters. That situation is unique in Europe, so a European directive is not suitable. There are many other examples of cases in which we need national flexibility. I welcome the assurance given by Government Front Benchers that despite what happened with the MEPs from the Government's own party, Ministers will at least fight to retain the opt-out.
	I will cut my remarks short, because there is another Member who wishes to speak, but let me just put something on record first. In Northern Ireland in particular, the working time directive would cause a great problem for many of the emergency services. Of the 68 fire stations in Northern Ireland, 46 rely totally on retained firefighters. If the working time directive applied to them, large parts of Northern Ireland would be left without a local fire station. As has been pointed out, it is not an option to say, "Well, let's have full-time firefighters in all those stations." One thousand firefighters in Northern Ireland are retained firefighters and would be affected by the measure.
	In my constituency the life boat would be affected, as would the coastguards. Ironically, although the directive is supposed to be applied for health and safety reasons, health and safety would be impaired by it. It is therefore important that the Government push on their commitment that the opt-out will be retained.
	At a time of recession, when Northern Ireland is particularly dependent on small businesses, flexible hours will enable many businesses to remain viable and will probably enable many workers to stay in employment.
	For all those reasons, I welcome the commitment that has been given from the Front Bench today, though there still appears to be some unwillingness to consider the sectoral opt-out. The retained firefighters union in Northern Ireland has asked for the opt-out to apply collectively to the fire service. I do not believe that a collective or a sectoral application is impossible. That does not seem to be a problem for other European countries, so why should it not be possible for the United Kingdom?
	Flexibility and the right of countries to determine their own working practices, to which individuals can sign up, are important. Rather than the super-state of Europe dictating to us, the issue should be determined by this Parliament and its Members, who are elected to reflect the needs of their constituents and their own country.

Julian Lewis: The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) was making such an excellent speech that I am almost sorry that he cut it short in order to allow me to make a modest contribution to the debate. In showing that courtesy, he sets an example that certain people on the Front Benches would do well to emulate.
	I did not come along to take part in the debate, as the Secretary of State implied, because it was one way to lure all the Eurosceptics out from their caves. I came not because I am a doctor—although I have that academic title, I know nothing whatsoever about medicine. I am not even an honorary physician, like the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) who, sadly, is no longer in his place.
	I came because I know a man who is a doctor, or at least I received a fax from that excellent service writetothem.com from a man who is a doctor. His name is Mr. Jason Millington. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and he is an orthopaedic specialist currently working at the North Hampshire hospital who lives in my constituency.
	Mr. Millington has set out very pithily indeed the basis of why members of the medical profession are so concerned about the implications of the working time directive. He has done that under four headings—patient safety, training, professional status and productivity. On patient safety, he says that there is no doubt in his mind that in preparing for the directive, junior doctors' rotas are unable to sustain the mandatory 48-hour week and to provide adequate service to patients. He writes:
	"We are already stretched, and further dilution of our time will make holes in the rota that have been inadequately planned for. Locum cover for these slots is inappropriate, as well as wishful thinking"
	in his understanding of the situation.
	On training, Mr. Millington says that doctors' training is largely based on experience, as we heard in the excellent contribution from the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), to whom the House always listens with respect on this subject. My correspondent adds that many doctors
	"earn no more money by working 56 hours than 48 hours, yet still recoil from the idea of a shorter working week imposed by Europe."
	That is because they are concerned about the skill base in the future. Mr. Millington asks me whether I am
	"happy for Consultants of the future to be trained with less than half the clinical exposure as the current Consultants...Should this ring any warning bells?"
	On professional status, he says that he is sure that I, like most professional people, work more than 48 hours a week, and goes on:
	"To impose a ridiculous restriction is demeaning and demoralising. You reap what you sow".
	He warns that if we want young doctors to be a "generation of clock-watchers", the directive will guarantee that that comes to pass.
	Finally, on productivity, Mr. Millington says that every doctor affected by the directive
	"will lose a day's productivity a week. This amounts to around 70,000 working days a week in the NHS."
	He asks whether I am prepared
	"to see the possible collapse of service in any of the hospitals in your constituency on the back of a one-size-fits-all European policy".
	Finally, he points out that a recent Royal College of Physicians survey of the 48-hour week pilot scheme showed that 84 per cent. of the pilots created gaps in the rotas, so locums were required to cover the gaps; that 40 per cent. of the pilots had to use consultants to plug gaps in the junior rotas; and that 58 per cent. of doctors thought that patient care was worse under a 48-hour week. Mr. Millington says:
	"There are a limited number of locums in the UK. Many say that the system cannot support such a change."
	We politicians have little of value to say to doctors. However, Mr. Millington has shown that doctors have plenty of value to say to us politicians.

Mark Francois: I am pleased to sum up from the Conservative Benches after this lively debate. In the time available, I shall do my best to refer to at least some of the very good speeches that we have heard during its course.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) and other hon. Members have set out, the European Parliament's proposed version of the revised directive has the potential to do crippling damage to the NHS. The implementation of the existing directive has been subject to damning criticism from the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Surgeons in Training.
	A British Medical Association survey of junior doctors found that almost two thirds reported that compliance with the 48-hour week would have a negative effect on their training. A recent editorial in the  British Medical Journal succinctly summed the issue up:
	"If the directive was meant to improve clinical care and the quality of life and training for junior medical staff, its effect has been the opposite. The changes to working hours have had a major negative effect on the working life, free time, and education of junior doctors in the NHS."
	The threat to our public services from the European Parliament's proposed abolition of the opt-out and the distinction between active and inactive on-call time goes even wider than the NHS. Its effects would cause severe difficulties for a wide range of other vital public service workers, including care home workers and retained firefighters, as was rightly highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) and for Poole (Mr. Syms) and the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson).
	So far, so bad—but the effects of both the current legislation and the European Parliament's proposed changes go further. As the latest burdens barometer from the British Chambers of Commerce shows, the working time directive, as implemented by the Working Time Regulations 1999, is the single most expensive regulatory burden on British businesses introduced under this Government, with a total cost of £16 billion as of July last year and an annual recurring cost of almost £1.8 billion. Working time regulations on transport workers add a further annual burden of £423 million on British businesses.
	So no one—Minister, Member of this House or Member of the European Parliament—should be under any doubt that the existing legislation imposes considerable cost on British enterprise. That is not to argue against all its contents—I hope that no one would disagree with the importance of statutory paid holidays, for example—but it is to emphasise the burdens that British businesses already labour under. The now threatened opt-out is crucial to British businesses' ability to remain globally competitive. The then Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), rightly underlined how critical it was for our businesses' flexibility when he said only last June:
	"That flexibility has been preserved by ensuring workers can continue to have choice over their working hours in future years."
	Formal negotiations on this vital matter are due to start in less than a fortnight in the conciliation process to which several Members have referred. One would have thought that the Government would have done everything in their power to support their case for retention of the opt-out, yet Ministers have failed to carry out even an impact assessment on the loss of the opt-out. According to a study by the think-tank Open Europe, the reason, according to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, is that
	"no one expected the opt-out to come up for negotiation".
	Because of the Government's failure to examine the matter properly, we have to rely on third party work.
	According to the CBI, 3 million workers—10 per cent. of the British work force—take advantage of the opt-out. Open Europe's study has also found that if those workers were no longer allowed to take advantage of their right to work as they please, the cost to the British economy would be between £47 billion and £67 billion by 2020. To take the effect on just one specific part of Britain's economy, the British Constructional Steelwork Association, which represents an industry with 100,000 employees and an annual turnover of over £5 billion, has said:
	"we are seriously concerned that any negotiated deal that does anything to restrict our working hours could have serious consequences for all of us and in particular our industry which would not be able to operate without the flexibility the opt-out allows us".
	It surveyed 1,000 workers in that field of industry, and the results show that 90 per cent. of them want to retain the opt-out from the working time directive.
	This is not a cost that the British economy can afford, least of all when we face possibly the worst economic downturn of the past 60 years and when, thanks to this Government's economic mismanagement, the country is the worst prepared of any major developed economy. As the Institute of Directors has said, the
	"irony"
	of the abolition of the opt-out would be
	"that the people who will suffer the most will be ordinary workers. Employees who want to work beyond 48 hours a week, so that they can earn more money to pay food bills and the mortgage, will no longer be able to do so if the opt-out goes".
	More broadly, the CBI has said:
	"the right of employees to work longer hours if they choose to is vital to their ability to maintain the living standards of their families during a recession. The needs of workers and businesses are aligned. Both need the flexibility to respond to changing economic circumstances. British business will depend on the 48 hour 'opt out' when the upturn comes, and urges the Government to maintain the common position previously agreed in the Council. No more compromise is possible on this point."
	That is an important point which I hope Labour Members will take on board: no further compromise is possible.
	If the European Parliament gets its way, our hospitals will be less safe, our doctors will be worse trained, the NHS's resources will be put under further strain, our fire service will be dangerously stretched, our economy will be less prosperous and less competitive, with the inevitable consequence that tax revenues will shrink further, and the likelihood must be that yet more businesses will go to the wall or have to shed jobs, so that even more people will find themselves out of work.
	How did we find ourselves in so dangerous a situation? The Government linked the agency workers directive—that has its legal base in the old social chapter, which originally they rightly opposed—with the revised working time directive. That point was rightly highlighted in the very good speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown). As the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs told a Committee in another place in October,
	"we never particularly wanted these two directives to be taken as a package...but most Member States wanted it and decided that way".
	Having reached an agreement on a revised version of the directive that at least preserved the opt-out and made a distinction between active and inactive on-call time, the Government made their next mistakes: ones of complacency and failure of political leadership. The Minister happily boasted to journalists, "I don't think" that the issue of the opt-out "will reappear", apparently oblivious to the fact that working time legislation is subject to co-decision with the European Parliament.
	The Government have shown remarkable incompetence at the European negotiating table. By linking the two directives and then letting the agency workers directive precede the working time directive, they made the current dangerous position possible. That is Janet and John negotiating, to use the earlier phrase of the Secretary of State. But what is really inexcusable is the behaviour of Labour's MEPs. They are members of the European Parliament's Socialist group and it was down to them to make the case to their colleagues on behalf of their constituents and to give a lead. Instead, the majority voted to scrap the opt-out and the distinction between active and inactive on-call time. They were led into that vote by their then Chief Whip, Glenis Willmott, who has since been chosen as Labour's leader in the European Parliament. On her election, the Prime Minister congratulated her, saying:
	"Glenis will provide excellent leadership of the European Parliamentary Labour Party".
	Given her record on this directive, do Ministers stand by that today? When the Minister winds up for the Government will he say that Ms Willmott has provided excellent leadership on the working time directive? If he is reluctant to do so, I shall intervene on him and give him a definite chance to say it.
	What is more extraordinary is that the Labour party has published a document called "100 Labour Achievements in Europe". I have this significant tome here. In the second boast in the document, it says that Labour MEPs have
	"implemented EU wide laws on working time, limiting the length of time workers can be obliged by their employer to work to 48 hours per week".
	That shows Labour MEPs boasting of their achievement, but does the Minister stand by it? Is it the Government's real policy, regardless of how long anyone wants to work, and regardless of the damage it would do to our NHS, to ban any employee from working more than 48 hours a week?
	So let us be clear: Labour MEPs have let down our national health service, they have let down our firefighters and they have let down businesses struggling to make ends meet in the recession, and they are attacking British jobs. The fundamental underlying truth is that the Labour party is abandoning the centre ground of British politics. It is increasingly taking its lead from the trade unions and others on the hardcore left. Labour MEPs, like the Cabinet Ministers manoeuvring for future leadership bids, are bidding to win their favour, so instead of representing the national interest, they pursue factional interests within the Labour party. That is the symptom of a party that has forgotten that its purpose is to talk to and speak for the British nation.
	If Ministers are going to go into the negotiations to preserve our opt-out with credibility they must insist that Labour MEPs renounce their vote against our opt-out and against the rules on on-call time. Given what is at stake, I do not see how they can do anything less without fatally undermining our negotiating position. People in the European Parliament and in the Commission are asking privately how it can be that the British Government are supposedly digging in on this issue while their MEPs voted in precisely the opposite direction. If the Government's position in these vital negotiations is to have any credibility, the Minister needs to answer that question clearly tonight.
	The Government must make it plain to European partners that our opt-out from the working time directive and the correction of the European Court's judgments on on-call time are red-line issues and that no further compromise is acceptable. The Government got us into this mess by linking the working time directive with the agency workers directive. Labour MEPs made a bad situation worse, and now large numbers of jobs in Britain are potentially at stake. That is unacceptable, and the Government must not give way on the working time directive. We intend to hold them to account on that in the forthcoming European elections on behalf of all those we represent in this country.

Patrick McFadden: We will know one way or the other whether the conciliation process has succeeded before the European elections.
	We believe that the flexibility shown in the way that the UK has implemented the working time directive has been right. It cannot be argued that it has had a damaging effect on workers' health and safety in the UK, because our health and safety record is good, but it can be argued that it is an important element of choice for workers, businesses and the economy as a whole. As we take the negotiations forward, it is important to contrast our engagement in Europe with the policy that would be pursued by the Opposition. How they hope to achieve anything for Britain in Europe by pursuing an isolationist approach that draws away from the mainstream of European politics is completely beyond most people in mainstream thinking. That approach will not achieve for the UK; our approach can.
	We believe in opportunity and in the chance to work harder to lift oneself up and make a better life for oneself and one's family. Sometimes, choosing to work longer hours is part of that. It is important to retain the opt-out, and that will be our objective in the weeks and months ahead. On that basis, I would ask the House to back the amendment in the Government's name.

Gaza

Nadine Dorries: I am delighted to have secured the debate and grateful for the opportunity to raise this subject, particularly given the present economic climate. I am sure that many other Members have seen, as I have, an increase in the number of visitors to their surgeries who are experiencing both financial problems and problems in gaining access to help via the legal sector.
	I believe that the solicitor's profession may be one that stands to do very well as a result of the economic downturn. However, when my constituents experience financial difficulties, either in relation to their businesses or on a personal level, the first place many of them tend to go for help is the citizens advice bureau. Sadly, my local CAB provides no legal help, because it is deemed to be rural and thus not required to make such assistance available. Many people who go there are advised to instruct a solicitor. A number of them may already be in extreme financial difficulties, but fall outside the current legal aid threshold. As some are quite desperate, they proceed to instruct a solicitor anyway, thereby possibly incurring further debt.
	Against that background, I want to say a little about the Legal Services Act 2007. When the Act was first debated in the House, the economic situation was much better, but it is about to come fully into force in a different climate. The Act liberalises and frees up the legal market. It will encourage much greater competition between legal services and, it is to be hoped, a climate of greater consumer focus on the basis of that greater market competitiveness. That is welcome and long overdue. It is welcome not least because it removes the self-regulating process that was previously in place; it could never have been a good situation to have solicitors regulating solicitors. The new route for dealing with complaints will be the Legal Complaints Service.
	The Legal Services Act will also enable the formation of new types of multidisciplinary practices involving lawyers of different disciplines. We will even see, organisations such as "Tesco Legal" or "Sainsbury Legal", as large businesses that are not currently involved in the legal profession will be able to enter it through the alternative business structure and the Legal Services Act.
	I have a concern, however. In my constituency, there are lots of high street-type solicitors—small firms and practices. The majority of complaints that my constituents bring to me regarding solicitors are about the larger firms. I can only think that that is the case because the smaller firms fight harder for their business; perhaps they build up a reputation on the high street, and then work hard to keep it. As small solicitors do not have access to large advertising budgets, their business is spread mainly by local advertising and word of mouth. I always imagine that if a solicitor in a small market town, for example, is a bad solicitor and does not serve the local population well, people will get to know about that pretty quickly. The larger practices seem to have a gung-ho and more conveyer-belt attitude towards their consumers. Certainly all the cases that have been brought to my surgery have involved larger firms.
	More people are now needing to access legal help, and to do so in a cost-effective way, but I am worried that in the current economic climate the Legal Services Act may inadvertently lead to some of these high street solicitors being forced out of business. They have already suffered with regard to changes in legal aid over the years, and they might no longer be viable or in a position to practise and offer services to local people. That worries me because of some of the stories of incompetence that I have heard recently. I am aware that, when having dealings with a law firm, some people may not like the answers they receive because of a legal point or because a solicitor has not been able to reach the solution they wanted them to reach. However, I have also lately heard of a number of cases that are just down to sheer incompetence.
	I am aware of the principle of sub judice, so I will not talk about specifics, but I would like to outline one case that is causing particular hardship at present. It is a divorce case involving a single mother. She contacted a legal firm, which understood that she would be chasing a large financial settlement from her ex-husband, and it welcomed her with open arms. However, when its representatives discussed the case with her and realised that that was not going to be possible, and that what she wanted was just to secure a monthly maintenance payment for her children, she was dropped like a hot brick and ended up having to represent herself. She therefore did not get an adequate settlement for her children. Almost by agreement, the solicitors did not pursue payment because they had been negligent; they had failed in terms of parts 1 and 2 of the solicitors' code of conduct.
	As the solicitors had failed in that, one assumes that they would have felt embarrassed to chase their bill. Unfortunately, two years later, they have decided to pursue the bill. I have made inquiries as to whether we could go through the complaints procedure as it stands at the moment, but unfortunately things have been left too late. The solicitors have chased a single parent living on minimum maintenance payments two years later for a bill of more than £1,000—she is not going to be able to pay it, but she is being chased via the courts and a county court judgment. As she is being pursued two years later—by the way, she even received a letter from the solicitors saying that they were perusing past files and had just found the bill—we cannot do anything about it, despite the fact that she is being pursued through the courts, because the time frame has elapsed.
	That is indicative of the old self-regulating culture, which was not consumer-focused. Can the Minister reassure us that in a concerted effort to eradicate the old culture, which was far more concerned with protecting and regulating the profession from within, when the new legal complaints office comes into force via the physical move into the new building, it will bring about a change in the old culture? We do not see that happening at the moment; although we have had the 2007 Act and it has been debated in this place, and although much has been said about the old culture and about how it needed to change and was not consumer-focused—I have looked at the debates that have taken place—my experience and that of my constituents suggests that it does not seem to be happening. Can he provide some kind of assurance that the ombudsman is aware of the old culture and that a new broom will be sweeping through?
	I have looked at the legal ombudsman's annual report, and I have concerns because it sounds an almost triumphant note in stating that 60 per cent. of complaints are dealt with within three months. That is still indicative of the old culture, because dealing with things in three months is not good enough—it is just too slow. When someone in a difficult financial situation finds that 12 weeks down the line their complaint is barely being looked at, never mind closed, they are put in a stressful situation, as they will be looking to the Legal Complaints Service to provide them with a solution either to a dispute with solicitors or to another difficult situation. The annual report should not be triumphant about that figure; it is something to be concerned about, because that time frame is not quick enough. My experience and that of my constituents suggests that solicitors move at an incredibly slow rate, and I would like the legal ombudsman to be pushing this along.
	I began by talking about citizens advice bureaux, and I wish to raise one further point with the Minister. Given the economic circumstances, does he think it possible that central funding could be made available to all citizens advice bureaux to provide legal assistance in the form of paralegals or in some other way? That would mean that rather than being advised to instruct a solicitor and thus incur further problems, some people could receive more useful and much less expensive assistance at their citizens advice bureau, which might help them to resolve the situation there and then, without going on to secure further debt. A halfway house solution of that kind may be useful to some people.
	I do not wish to make it sound as though I have a vendetta against the legal service, because I certainly do not. Like MPs, the majority of lawyers and solicitors are all very honourable people who are trying to serve their customers and clients in the best way that they can. However, the new Legal Complaints Service needs to be robust, tough and consumer-focused. It is much more important for that to be the case now in this economic environment, because that service is dealing with consumers who often have nowhere else to go.

Shahid Malik: It is an honour to respond to the debate in your presence, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) for highlighting this important issue.
	The Government take the regulation of the legal profession very seriously. These are challenging times, which is why the Government have taken decisive action to deliver real help to families and businesses and to provide a shot in the arm for the economy. It is worth reminding ourselves of some of the Government's action in this regard. We have cut taxes—the 2.5 per cent. VAT cut put £12.4 billion into the economy. We have increased personal tax allowances, child benefit, tax credits and pensions. We have helped home owners facing repossession with a package of measures that could prevent up to 16,000 repossessions. We have provided real help for thousands of businesses, helping firms with cash flow difficulties, protecting jobs and improving liquidity and business planning for small and medium-sized companies. We have ensured that investment continues and protected and created jobs by bringing forward £3 billion of capital projects on housing repairs and insulation, school extensions, GP refurbishments and transport improvements and by lending up to £13 billion to support private finance initiative projects.
	The Government recognise that access to high quality legal services is vital for vulnerable consumers affected by the economic conditions. It is essential that consumers have confidence in their lawyers and the advice that they give. A robust and well-functioning complaints handling process is an important part of maintaining consumer confidence in the legal profession. The public need to know that when things go wrong complaints will be dealt with independently, quickly and fairly.
	The hon. Lady raised her concerns about the impact of the economic climate on access to justice in rural areas. That was the subject of passionate debate during the passage of the Legal Services Act 2007, so we were considering that impact long before the current climate evolved. I thank the hon. Lady for rightly bringing it back to the attention of the House. I note in particular her concerns about larger providers being able to cherry-pick the most profitable areas of work, creating what have been commonly called "legal deserts". Although I do not intend to detail all the regulatory powers and obligations available to the Legal Services Board, I stress that the board, as well as the approved regulators, has a statutory duty to promote the improvement of access to justice.
	The Government are committed to ensuring that people have access to quality legal help and advice when it is needed, particularly in the current economic climate when the number of people seeking debt advice and related advice is increasing, as the hon. Lady rightly said. I recognise the crucial role that Citizens Advice and other advice organisations play in that regard. Last year, the Legal Services Commission spent £80 million on legal services delivered by the not-for-profit advice sector. A further £13 million has recently been made available to fund 50,000 extra debt cases and 20,000 housing cases in response to the current economic downturn.
	In addition, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has recently made a further £10 million available until March 2010 through Citizens Advice to expand local face-to-face advice capacity in England and Wales. That could assist a further 335,000 people each year. The Legal Services Commission also funds housing possession court duty schemes. The schemes mean that anyone in danger of eviction or of having property repossessed can get free legal advice and representation on the day of the hearing, regardless of their financial circumstances.
	Since the scheme began in 2005, the number of people who have been helped has more than doubled to around 30,000 a year. About 24,500 people were helped between April and December 2008.
	In December, my noble Friend Lord Bach, the Minister responsible for legal aid, announced a study on local advice. It will look at the impact of the recession on the demand for advice, the impact of recent reforms on advice provision and changes in trends in the funding of advice.
	The study is due to report at the end of April 2009. It will enable us to develop a more complete picture of the wider issues affecting the advice sector, and of how to address them effectively. That should give us the evidence base to make future decisions with the advice sector and other stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of local advice services.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire focused on the Legal Services Act. I can confirm that recent reforms introduced by the Act aim to improve the funding available for, for example, pro-bono advice—advice given for free. The Act enables courts to make orders for the payment of legal costs when the successful party is represented wholly or partly pro bono. Such costs are paid not to the lawyers involved but to the Access to Justice Foundation, a charity that distributes the funds strategically to where resources are needed the most. I know that the hon. Lady will welcome that.
	On solicitor complaints, I should make it clear that, although I am obviously sympathetic to the problems that constituents have encountered, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on individual cases—although I hasten to add that the hon. Lady's constituent is fortunate to have an MP willing to advocate so effectively on her behalf. Individual cases are properly matters for the Law Society, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Legal Complaints Service, as the profession is independent and self-regulating. Under the current system, anyone unhappy with the service provided by their solicitor, or with how their complaint has been dealt with, can approach the LCS. Its complaints guidance suggests that a reasonable time for a solicitor to respond to a client's initial complaint is 28 days. I noted the three-month example that the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire gave, which is out of kilter with that guidance.
	The LCS aims to resolve quickly all complaints referred to it. About three quarters of the complaints it receives are resolved within six months, as the hon. Lady mentioned, although complicated cases may, of course, take longer to resolve. The LCS does not publish details of the complaints records of solicitors. It has recently consulted on the possibility of the publication of complaints records but, following the consultation, it concluded that more work needed to be done. However, the principle is one to which the LCS is committed.
	When the LCS receives complaints about a solicitor's conduct, it will refer the matter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The SRA is making more information available to the public: for example, decisions to impose conditions on how solicitors practise are now displayed on the regulator's website, thus empowering individuals.
	As for public awareness of complaints mechanisms, we agree that there is a need for awareness-raising activities. Coal health complaints are a good example of how the LCS is seeking to make sure that consumers are aware of their right to redress. The LCS is proactively seeking to make sure that miners know how to complain if they have received poor service from their solicitor. Part of the aim is to raise awareness of how consumers can work more effectively with their solicitors to raise their concerns at an early stage, without the need to make a formal complaint.
	The LCS is also taking steps to reach out to traditionally "hard-to-reach" groups, or groups considered to be more vulnerable or disadvantaged. As part of this work, LCS staff attend conferences organised by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. They engage with a range of key stakeholders to try to make sure that consumers are aware of the services that the LCS offers.
	I am aware of increasing concern about the tactics that some solicitors employ when pursuing costs. I think that we would all agree that court action should be the last step in pursing payment. Where a matter is referred to the Legal Complaints Service, it will discourage use of the courts until the complaint is resolved. Solicitors are also subject to the duties set out in the solicitors' code of conduct. Rule 2 of the code includes a requirement to advise the client of the basis and terms of charges, and to discuss with the client how the client will pay. Failure to comply with the code could amount to misconduct, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority would be within its rights to take action over non-compliance.
	I commend the actions taken by regulators to improve complaints handling, but the system had needed significant reform for a long time. The Legal Services Act provided that reform by establishing a single entry point complaints body, the Office for Legal Complaints. The OLC will be under a duty to increase the public's understanding of their rights and duties, which may include consumer rights in respect of complaints. The OLC will administer an ombudsman scheme and will be able to award redress of up to £30,000. Conduct matters will be referred to the relevant regulator for appropriate disciplinary action.
	The recently established Legal Services Board has already set out its priorities in relation to complaints. The board's business plan, which is currently subject to consultation, sets out key deliverables for the coming financial year. They include appointing the OLC, approving its scheme rules, and setting out the requirements for in-house complaints handling. Some of those deliverables have already been achieved, and the key personnel have been identified. Elizabeth France, the chair, has been in place since autumn 2008. Her board, the chief ombudsman and the chief executive have also been recruited. They will now work to ensure that the OLC is implemented effectively before the ombudsman services are fully operational; that is expected to be in 2010.
	Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire for highlighting such an important issue at a crucial time for many people. It is vital that people have access to good quality legal advice, especially in difficult times, and that they have somewhere to go if things go wrong. There is still much to do, but I hope that the examples that I have given show how the system is improving.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.